A Rose By Any Other Name…

My Nanny was a hilarious person. She was just deadly. I was closer to her than to any other grandparent, and she’s probably next to my parents and sister in the line for who I’ve spent the most time with in my life. She died just over a year ago.

I was the family member elected to speak at her funeral. Even though she has ten children, as the eldest grandchild I was turned to when none of her kids could hold themselves together long enough to speak coherently.

It was the saddest day of my life the day she died. The day after she died I had to start composing what I was going to say about her at the funeral. I wanted to paint the perfect picture and do her proud, while at the same time keeping it light hearted enough that I wouldn’t fall to pieces as I read.

Because I had to maintain my composure in order to speak at the funeral, I worked on training myself not to cry, or at least to control my tears, during the day leading up to the event.

All through the ceremony (my speech was to be one of the last things done) I listened to the priest talk about the Rosie he knew, the Rosie her friends knew, the Ma she was to her children, my mother, the Nanny she was to eleven doting grandchildren. I couldn’t let myself cry until after I spoke.

I asked my little cousin Kerry, who at age 8 was able to keep herself from tears because the sadness and the loss did not fully register with her, to smile at me. I couldn’t let myself cry if Kerry kept smiling.

I kept looking straight ahead. I kept my gaze away from the coffin, and the picture of my Nanny at her happiest, which was placed on top of the varnished wood. I couldn’t let myself cry from looking at the coffin and knowing who was inside it.

As much as I wanted to share the grief I was feeling with my mother and her siblings, I was too afraid to look at them. I knew once I saw their faces, sorrow scarred and wet from tears, I would start to cry too. I couldn’t let myself cry until after I spoke, and I couldn’t look at them.

I needed some way to distract my brain from the gravity of the situation. As is the norm at a funeral, there were bouquets of flowers laid out all around the church. I took to listing off names and colours of all the flowers I could see. White lilies, red roses, white orchids, yellow chrysanthemums, green foliage, lilacs, carnations. I listed them all in my head over and over like a weird, endless flower shopping list. I couldn’t let myself cry in front of the flowers.

I remember finding a confidence I didn’t think I had in speaking in front of a church packed to the rafters. It seemed like everyone I looked at was crying so I tried to look at nothing while I spoke. After the funeral, it seemed like everyone I knew and everyone my Nanny knew congratulated me on speaking so well. I was delighted that so many people said my Nanny would be proud of me.

Because of the initial shock of her death, the surreal nature of it all, having to host family members visiting and attend meals so we could all gather to pretend we were back to normal, I didn’t fully allow my sadness to happen.

I didn’t ignore it, but the occasion of it all took over and I didn’t stop to think of the things I would really miss now that she was dead. Like, the way she spoke my name was unique, and it sounded like no one else’s pronunciation. The way she would offer me food six times, and I would refuse her six times, anytime I was in her house. She had that very Irish-motherly need to feed anyone who crossed her hall door.

Before she got sick and couldn’t do many of the things she used to, she would almost constantly be cooking. There was an eternal pot of stew on the cooker, and, like Mary Poppin’s carrier bag, food just kept coming out of it ceaselessly. Hundreds of lunch-boxes full of stew would be handed out to visitors to the house. She was a feeder.

She liked to feed other people, but her own feeding rituals were quite strange. She sent me downstairs for a jam sandwich one day and I returned with one. She examined it, and sent me back down to put on more jam, telling me there wasn’t enough. Then when I returned with more jam, she said “No, I wanted HAM.”
She seemed to have a few things that in her later years which she never went without. Like Extra chewing gum. And tissues. And a glass of water. And her walking frame.

There were other little oddities about her that just made her simultaneously hilarious and endearing. Like how she would literally shout at the television and throw slippers whenever Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh was on The Afternoon Show. She took an intense dislike to her one day and could not tolerate her presence on the small screen.

She joined Facebook in order to keep in touch with her ex-pat children, Tina and Teresa who live in Michigan and Alice Springs respectively. She had her own laptop which she enjoyed sitting in front of and typing away. Her grasp on using Facebook wasn’t the best, her status updates would regularly have to be re-directed to someone’s specific profile page, but she got her messages across.

She would press twenty euro into my hand about once a week and whisper “don’t tell your ma” even though my mam was ten minutes drive from there, sitting at her desk at work. For years, she didn’t take into account either inflation or the fact that it wasn’t 1945 anymore, and would give me a fiver and tell me to get myself something. Getting myself something with a fiver other then bus fare to and from town would be difficult but I acted like she had just handed me a gold bar and she gave herself a mental gold star for being an excellent grandmother.

The other day, my mother was listening back to old voicemails on our house phone, and she came across one from my Nanny from about 3 months before she died. It was for me. It said “Hi. It’s Nanny. I bought you some ingredients to make your mammy and daddy breakfast when they come home, so make sure you come and get them off me.” My parents were away on holidays and she had the kindness of heart and the consideration to realise that they’d murder a good fry on their return and I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to go buy anything. When my mam played the voicemail she was getting visibly upset and I don’t think she’s very comfortable showing her emotions. So, to be a good daughter, I pretended it was just a lovely thing to hear and did the necessary “ahh, God”, and then left the room. I cried for about half an hour that evening. Hearing her voice again was more gut wrenching than I anticipated it might be, and it felt like someone had crushed my chest when I heard it.

Sometimes I’ll be driving near where she lived and I’ll think, ah, I’ll drop in to Nanny. My chest gets crushed again and I remember she’s not coming back.

Listen Up, Peaches Geldof

(I want to start the letter with Dear but it seems too formal for someone so… not formal?)

You there, with the tats,

Listen. I totally get that your mother died and that your life in the glare of the media spotlight has been worlds apart from the lives lived by most teenagers, but really. You’d  think your mother’s death from a heroin overdose would be warning enough to keep away from drugs?

From butter wouldn’t melt…

I never really thought you were the ideal person for a lingerie campaign, not least because of all those tattoos (like, who wants to see a girl all-but-naked covered in mini-cartoons? Not me). But now that those absolutely minging photos of you are online for the world to see, I think it was the right decision for Ultimo to axe you as their face and body. 

My 16 year old sister sees and hears things about you frequently I’d imagine, and I’d be less than comfortable with her being influenced by someone as obviously self-destructive as you. 

….to head melted from (supposed) taking heroin

A bit of maturing and a good slap on the arse from your Dad and you might make a recovery and lead a normal adult life. Otherwise, if you keep on at this destructive path, it might be history repeating itself, which would be a huge tragedy.

Cop on, 

♥

Coming soon…

A turbo deadly blog, currently under construction, about song lyrics that have effected me or that I think are particularly fantastic. Watch this space.

Attempted Murder by a 6 Year Old

Something I did as a young child that may amuse.

My sister burst into the world in 1993. She was the second child, I was the eldest. I was the baby, I was the one who got the attention. I was the golden child. Not anymore. She was 6 months old when I (accidentally, obviously) almost killed her. 

I was six. The spring sunshine beamed in our huge double patio doors making our living room a mini sauna. Our blue patterned sofa, blue pattered carpet and blue patterned wall paper couldn’t have BEEN more mismatched. The 90s, eh?

My sister was slumped over on a cushion on the couch. She hadn’t mastered staying upright just yet. My mother wanted to hang some clothes out to dry, so she (in her wisdom) left me kneeling beside the couch, with either hand on my tiny sister’s waist, propping her up. She was such a cutie. Little fat cheeks that you just want to bite right off. 

I was happy enough to hold her there until my mother returned, but being the slightly weird curious adventurer that I was, I decided to take a duvet (I cuddled in it that morning watching cartoons), fold it until it was huge and bulging, place it on top of the sofa and then place the baby right on top of the lot.

So. As I climbed the sofa to put the baby on the pile of soft furnishings, I didn’t stop once to consider what might happen if either of us were to fall.

The pile was about 4 or 5 feet high. The baby was sitting at the top, if only momentarily. Without a noise, my little sister’s tiny body folded over and fell clean off the pile onto the ground, hitting her soft skull of the carpeted floor with a little thud. She didn’t start to cry. I didn’t know at the time that this was a bad sign.

What happened next was a bit of a blur.

My mother returned from hanging the clothes and saw the baby lying lifeless on the ground. She came around, and my mother put her in a high chair and tried to keep her awake, but to no avail. She lost consciousness once again and my mother called an ambulance and then my Nanny.

My wonderful (and obviously speedy) grandmother arrived before the ambulance (whether that’s a reflection on my Nanny’s speed or the Irish health system’s failings is another day’s blogging…). Either way. In a flurry of distressed talking, ambulance sirens and neighbours having a good gawp at the action, I was utterly confused and upset. I hadn’t anticipated my little adventure going THIS awry. All I wanted to do was entertain me and my little bundle of sisterly joy. 

I remember my nanny frog-marching me across the road to Patricia’s house. She had three children I used to pal with and was a lovely woman. Nanny rang the doorbell and walked off before anyone answered, leaving me to explain to Patricia that I needed temporary care. 

Patricia, luckily, saw the ambulance and understood why I was there, needing a babysitter. She didn’t ask any questions, probably for fear of upsetting me. Instead, I was handed some toys. In an instant I forgot about the catastrophic event that had preceded my trip across the road. I was oblivious to the fact that my baby sister was on the way to hospital, unconscious, with my Mam and Nanny having mini-heart attacks out of concern for the poor child. 

All the while, I was having beans on toast and having a unique, and rather enjoyable day. Oh, to be six years old again. 

Needless to say, my sister made a full recovery. She regained consciousness and was home within the day, ready to start growing into the clothes-robbing, make-up wearing, absolute torment that she is today. She’s a teenager now. And I can safely say that without her in our house, everything would be hella dull. She’s like a one-woman hugging machine, God bless her.

I Killed Buzz Cut Boy.

That previous post was quite negative, really. I felt bad for not acknowledging the amazing things I have going for me.

I have a great family, who support me with every little thing. I have deadly friends; the kind who encourage you, keep you occupied, entertain you, and all the while making your side split with laughter. I have a boyfriend who defies the laws of being male. On my list of 33 things my perfect man should have/be, he scored 32 and a half. That is not a very easy list to make up points on, let me tell you. I’m not gonna go on too much about him though in case word gets out and people start trying to steal him.

That’s not the point of this post. I won’t bore you any longer.

I had a bizarre dream last night, as I so often do. 

I was in a hairdressing competition. I was using my friend’s cousin as my model. There was a pre-competition gala dinner where there was tons of famous people and important people floating about. I knew it was a risk to leave my model to attend the gala (what if her hair wasn’t done in time?) but I was so determined to rub shoulders with the gala attendees, I left her. I arrived at the bash, strutted in, and mirror checked myself. I was HIDEOUS. I was in a mess. My hair was ponytailed and greasy, I was wearing yesterdays leftover make-up, I was wearing a very questionable ensemble. I was in no state to be meeting and greeting. 

I ran screaming from the party, fully prepared to crawl into the hole of eternal rejection and failure (there’s one in my bedroom). To make things worse… I arrive back into the hairdressing competition to find my model has been STOLEN by another hairdresser. In her place was a short haired BOY. I may have been an expert stylist, but there’s no french-rolling a buzz cut, talent or no talent. 

Panic ensued. Feeling hopeless, hapless and hideous, I reached into my handbag and retrieved… a HATCHET (I don’t know why subconscious me was carrying a hatchet). My gaze fixed on the Buzz Cut Boy. I raised my hatchet arm to swing at him, and then…

I woke up.

I was dangerously wielding my remote control in my right hand.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw the desperate looking version of myself from the gala and felt instantly saddened. Way to start a Monday, eh?

Someone Else’s Life?

I’m usually fairly positive about the direction my life is going in.

Where's that girl gone? That was me. Then.

But lately…

Have you ever felt like you’re living someone else’s life? Someone who is nothing like you, who isn’t doing the things you want to do, who takes the bus and diets and sits behind a desk?

I have no job. Actually, I have two jobs, and work 4 days a week, but neither of them pay me. Internships are like that. 

I plod along, telling myself that one day, one of them will hire me and I can announce proudly on Facebook that my day has arrived and I have a paying job in journalism. It’s a depressing state of affairs.

Being eternally broke, I can’t buy new things to make myself feel worthy of the fast paced world in which I live. I therefore hide from it behind long cardigans and Ugg boots, waiting for the day I get fashionable.

I want to be noticed. I want people to look at me and think ‘she must be someone’. I want to stop looking at the ordinary Irish girls who have achieved extraordinary things with envy and join them as they make their way to the top.

I know I could be so many things, and at my age, it’s not like the sun has set on my opportunities. But if I see one more member of The Saturdays turning 21, I think I might implode.

It seems like everyone around me is more successful, has a more fun job, has more ambition, has more contacts, knows more people, is climbing MY career ladder while I sit at the bottom waiting to be invited to start climbing. 

I don’t need an invitation. The ladder climbing starts today.