a nice cup of tea for my Grandma Betty

Five weeks ago the whole world changed. My grandma Betty passed away peacefully sitting in her favourite chair. It was her 73th wedding anniversary, she was dressed for the day with a cup of tea (half drunk) next to her and waiting for her son to take her out to lunch at her favourite club. And then she just left this world. I still can’t believe it. She was 98 and we had spoken on Friday and all was well. She had told me she had the card I had sent her and she loved it and we had a normal phone conversation and she was fussing over something and I said I’d talk to her again soon.

It took a huge effort and the help of the media and 5 MP’s in Sydney to contact NSW Health on my behalf to get up to Sydney for a private viewing. If I attended the funeral then it would have been limited to 20 people all up and the priest and funeral home weren’t keen on having someone from Victoria on their premises without 14 day quarantine. We also knew that we would have more than 20 attendees as grandma was still a volunteer with Meals on Wheels and one of the last veterans left and was still active in volunteering and attending events for them too.

And so by a pure miracle I was able to get to Sydney on the Tuesday, it took 3 hours to be processed through Sydney airport (under police guard the entire time) and get to the police quarantine hotel for a nights rest. My friend was texting me while I was at the international airport and asked for a photo – I said if I send you a photo and you don’t hear from me again then you know I never made it out alive and it was due to the photo! I did see a sign no photos to be taken of officials so thankfully I’m still here to tell the tale

Dinner was delivered to my door just before 9.30pm and I was face timing the family back home in Melbourne and eating dinner as I hadn’t had lunch and was starving. I didn’t sleep that night as I was afraid I would miss the viewing time. I woke up at 5, had a few coffees in bed and prayers then headed out to the funeral home for my last goodbye. It then took me 15 minutes just to leave the hotel with the police checking my paperwork, calling up that I was ok to leave and letting me go.

It was so peaceful and special at the funeral home, I did get my very special goodbye and a great sense of peace and closure in that short time. I knew that I needed it to say goodbye and make peace with how everything had turned out due to Covid and the very strict border restrictions at the moment. I know that there is so much suffering at the moment here in Australia and around the world and I will never forget the pain and suffering of others and their losses while I got to say my goodbye. So many people are not there when their loved one passes away or to say goodbye or attend the funeral and I will hold them in my prayers.

Being under police guard and in hotel quarantine was definitely an experience that my grandma would have found amusing. Even when we were on a bus we had a police escort with us and no one allowed to leave the bus except with a police offer. When I got back to Sydney airport for my flight home I had my own personal police offer waiting around until I boarded the plane. I told her you know I’m a homeschooling mum of 7 who goes to church every Sunday and has only been pulled over once by the police outside Bunnings. She told me she knew I was good! The police, health staff, hotel staff, everyone were amazing and so caring and friendly. They really are doing their job to keep everyone safe….meanwhile when I landed in Melbourne there wasn’t one official or important information to let people know about Melbourne and its restrictions. No masks handed out, no checks, no asking where have you travelled from, nothing. Its hard to contrast that with Sydney airport.

Watching the funeral from home was hard but also beautiful, we had organised for live broadcasting and it all went smoothly. OK we had put the responsorial psalm in the booklet in the wrong order as I didn’t check the draft properly and there was no singing or offertory procession so I didn’t get to include as many beautiful hymns as I would have liked it but it was lovely. We all got dressed up and watched together and then had a delicious lunch afterwards and shared memories and had a day of rest. In Sydney it was a very long and busy day for family and friends and so that was nice to have a special day to think about her and how lucky I was to have her in my life for so long.

My grandma was there when I was born in Cairns back in 1976 and has been there in my life ever since.

I have so many beautiful memories – she toilet trained my sister and I and was proud of it, we’d spend weekends and holidays with her and grandad. She’d teach us how to make our beds so that when we went to my nana’s house we were good guests and knew how to make our own bed.

She had a little table and chairs put in her kitchen for us to sit and eat at and then we graduated to the big table and would be given jobs to do for her. Her house never changed and still looks exactly the same as when I visited as a little girl. She would take us to the movies, buy us treats, take us for trips to the park and she was always one of the first people to visit me in hospital when I had a new baby.

She was born in Glasgow and money was short, her father died when she was young and he was in his early 40’s but they were happy. They were old Scots Catholics, I had to promise here that under absolutely no circumstances would we play Amazing Grace at her funeral Mass as that is what the protestants sang back in Scotland, never in the Catholic church! She still went to Confession but admitted that as she got older she only went once a year as at her age she didn’t have many sins to confess!

She went to Mass every sunday but never liked a long sermon or uncomfortable chairs. I have so many funny stories of taking her to Mass as she never minced her words. Once when I took her to the Easter Vigil we were up to the 6th reading and she let out a ‘Oh God’…..’not another reading’….I elbowed her and gave her a look! She would have been in her early 90’s by this stage and didn’t care too much if anyone overheard her. And she got away with it!

She worked at David Jones for 30 years and most of it in the toy department. I thought that the toys she bought us were so special as she must know the best toys to buy. She also knew that a lot of toys were junk as she had to do returns of toys as well. She then went on to serve Meals on Wheels for 30 years until Covid hit and we didn’t want her delivering meals as we wanted her home and safe. She hated that she couldn’t volunteer but she did understand.

She would fuss over us and worry and especially once my mum (her eldest daughter) passed away. I knew it was because she worried about us all just like a mother would. I dreaded telling her I was having a 7th baby because she would worry about me and any complications. As it would turn out our Lottie looked exactly like my mum as a baby and she treasured her and adored her. I knew she would but she would always worry so much.

She loved reading, volunteering, lots of cups of tea and shortbread biscuits, marmalade on toast, she still had a thick scottish accent despite being in Australia since the late 1940’s. She married into a big Catholic family and they welcomed her in and she ended up outliving them all being the last surviving one of that generation left. If you asked her what was the key to her long life sometimes she’d say I really don’t know and then she would say but I think its lots of fruit and vegetables, porridge for breakfast, tea and the occasional whiskey and beer.

The day she passed away I was just inconsolable…some people might say but Corrie she was 98, surely you knew she would pass away one day but its the shock of it. I really thought we had one more Christmas and one more birthday. She was so fit and healthy and was so excited about seeing us all again soon, when I told her we were moving back she said it was the best news she had heard in a long time and we could stay with her if needed to till we were set up. She was just such a big part of our lives and not just me and my family but everyone. She still had her friends of over 60 years who have cried at her loss. They’ve known her for so long, volunteered with her, been to Mass with her every Sunday.

She’s still with us though and I’ve definitely felt a closeness to her and to God the past few weeks. Not the first 2 days, the first 2 days were so sad and hard and I just didn’t feel her anywhere. But since then there have been so many little things. Just yesterday I was sitting and doing some knitting and watching a Hallmark kind of movie. My aunt texted me and said heh corrie are you still a knitter as I just found grandma’s knitting needles. I texted her back a photo of what I was doing and that I would love them. Another relative is trying to get back to Melbourne to see her Mother in a nursing home and missed her father’s funeral due to the strict border restrictions. As she was watching the funeral service she received her email advice that she can now travel to Melbourne. Just little things that let us know Betty is with us and keeping busy in heaven. She never rested here and I can see she’s going to need to slow down upstairs too.

The last book that she read was ‘Lantern in her hand’ by Bess Streeter Aldrich. It is a lovely story about one woman’s life, an american pioneer who raised her family through very tough times. Grandma loved the story and it was on the top of the pile of books I had sent her during lockdown. She would tell me to stop sending books as it was expensive to post but she loved reading them. At the end of the story her husband comes and takes her to heaven…………..and we think that on my grandma’s 73rd wedding anniversary that perhaps that is what happened to my grandma too.

We are grateful to God for a life lived to the full, for someone who was so generous and so involved in our lives who worried about us probably until the morning she left this world. We are grateful that she left this world peacefully with no suffering but our hearts really haven’t accepted that she’s not with us anymore.

Thank you to everyone for your kind messages, to my two sweet friends who delivered meals so we didn’t have to worry about dinner for a few nights and to my family and friends who have listened and been there. Thank you so much to everyone for your comments and for your kindness when I really needed it xx

Rest in peace, Grandma Betty. What a long life you lived and you will never be forgotten.

p.s I called this post ‘a nice cup of tea’ as grandma had written a story for a book published about war brides and her story was called a nice cup of tea. When she passed away she had a nice cup of tea beside her….