Safe Journey, Grandma.

Ethyl Storer died in the early hours of this morning, aged 90.

Strange how a life can be introduced and farewelled in one short sentence.

But this announcement makes me sad. Ethyl Storer was my grandmother - my mother’s mother.

It’s at times like these that I feel most acutely, the severing of the ties that connected me to my own family. There is so much I don’t know. So much that will pass before I’ll even realise it was there. Can you miss what you’ve never had? Not really. I can only mourn what might have been – the chance that was taken from me – the glimpse into something that could never be.

I was lucky enough to meet my grandmother twice – not long after I found my way back to my family, after 30 years of searching. However, the situation being what it was, I never had the chance to sit and talk with her alone. I never had the chance to get to know her as my grandmother, or even just as a person. We met as adults with no association other than I was once the daughter of one of her daughters. There was nothing to bridge the gap between us in this life. I have no history with her, no photographs of us together, no memories of visiting Grandma on holidays. Nothing to say we’d even met.

Now she’s gone.

I feel somewhat cheated. I feel disconnected. Here is a part of my history that has been wiped. Someone who should have been an integral part of my life and my children’s lives, has now been reduced to a few words on a piece of paper.

So there it is: the way of the earthly body. We reside within it for a short while, then we leave.

The sun is shining here and it is a most glorious day. Somewhere deep within my senses, I hear a former self, Snaru, say: It is a good day to die.

Yes, it is indeed a good day to die, and, Grandma Storer, wherever your journey takes you, I hope the pathway is a joyous one, full of good memories, laughter and sunshine.

Safe journey, Grandma.