The last time I saw my grandmother alive was in May of 1998. I had not seen her since moving back to Lisbon in the summer of 1993 to restart my university career, this time in Fine Arts, after the useless and expensive couple of years I had cost my father whilst in London at the Bartlett School of Architecture. My parents, at that time, were going through very hard financial times and their maintaining me at university in London for those two years can only have been a burden and an added source of concern to their many other worries. How did I thank them? After two years at UCL all I could say was that I was unhappy and unconvinced of what I was doing with my life and that I wanted to come home to Lisbon. These days, when I think back to those times, I feel ashamed to have put my parents in that situation at a time when they were indebted to the nines. It is to their credit that they accepted my bleating and whining and agreed to let me have another crack at a university career, this time in Lisbon and living back with them. At that time I can only have come across as puerile, spoilt and ungrateful although with the benefit of hindsight it is now clear to me that other issues with regards my psychological wellbeing had begun to rear their heads.

I had not seen my grandmother in over four years when we all flew back to the UK in 1998 to celebrate my grandfather’s 75th. I would rather not get into the details of why and how this came about, but suffice to say that at this stage my grandparents were no longer together as a couple and had been living separate lives for a number of years. They both suffered horrendously and their separation affected them in different ways. However, if on the one part my grandfather managed to battle on and get on with his life as best he could, my grandmother went into a steep decline, diving into an emotional and psychological trough that ended up with us having to place her in a retirement home under close supervision. My father and his two brothers – not to mention their wives, my aunts –  had an awful time trying to manage the constant crises regarding my grandmother and it was all dreadfully upsetting for all our family, even for those of us witnessing it all from a distance.

In May of 1998 I think she had been in this retirement home for six months or the best part of a year. We arrived from Lisbon for what must have been a long weekend to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday party most probably being held on a Saturday. Let us assume we flew in to Gatwick on the Thursday afternoon. The following afternoon – it was late afternoon I remember clearly –  we all went over to visit my grandmother. The NHS run retirement home where she now lived – near Frant, if I recall –  had once been a victorian stately home and it occupied lush grounds on a rather large estate. We went in through the front door and announced ourselves to the nurse on duty, who promptly led us over to the sitting room and pointed us towards an armchair occupied by a little thing looking crumpled and disheveled. I did not recognize her. My grandmother had been a slight but very striking woman all her life, and a live wire to boot,  but I was completely unprepared  for the physical and psychological contraction she had suffered in the five years since I had last seen her. We sat with her for a good half hour or so as she drifted in and out of the stories that we tried to engage her with; my grandmother, all crooked and shrunk and vacant. A bell was then rung, if I recall, and we were told it was time for her evening meal. This seemed like the right time for us to say our goodbyes and we all did but my father suggested that perhaps I might want to wheel her over to the dining room. One of the nurses showed me where her place was, at a table with another couple of old ladies. I placed her where I was told she should be, making sure she was comfortable, and then I lent over to kiss her goodbye when suddenly her eyes lit up and she was momentarily completely switched on; what we briefly said to each other I will keep to myself. I bade her goodbye and I think I extracted myself with some decorum…but the next thing I remember is finding myself outside in the grounds in floods of tears.

A few years later one of my uncles called my father to tell him she was rapidly slipping away and that he should get himself over as soon as possible. He arrived within twenty four hours to find both his brothers by their mother’s bedside. Within an hour of his arrival my grandmother left us. I like to think she held on as best she could – just long enough – to say goodbye to her three boys, together. That was on the 3rd of November 2002. Over the coming days we congregated as a family in preparation for her funeral. Of all of us, the only one who requested to see my grandmother’s body at the funeral home was my sister Emma. I had no need for that sort of closure but I understand, and respect, the fact that she did. My grandmother’s funeral at Langton Green on the 13th was as sober, understated and elegant as it was moving; a most British affair. At one point a shock of sunlight broke through the stained-glass windows and stroked my grandmother’s coffin with colored light as we sang a hymn. I remember it being brightest right about where her head would have been. In my mind I kissed her cheeks and stroked her hair.

Not that long ago I remember my close friend Monica talking about the death of her grandmother. She was there at the end and helped her leave. “You have done well enough”, she told her in Dominican Spanish, “it is time to go”. And the old lady went.