Nan

Nan

Her name was Jean Rosalind Forbes.  She grew up desperately poor, one of 16 children, in Eastern Ontario.   She didn’t have much education and her life was hard.  When she was 18 her family married her off to Charles Griffiths a man 40 years her senior.  Her family was glad for one less mouth to feed.   The man she married had emigrated from Wales. They had one son, Robert Charles.  Her husband was in ill health and had many strokes over the years.  She spent her life taking care of him until he died at 93.  She was 53.  In the small town where she lived everyone knew her as Auntie Jean, who loved all the kids and taught Sunday school at the Presbyterian Church.  I just called her Nan.  She was my father’s mother and I loved her with all my heart. 

For reasons I never knew and never would, she was estranged from my father and her grief over this knew no bounds.   While he was married to my mother he made his duty visits with his wife and kids.  But once my parents divorced he never saw her again.  But I remained in her life.   

Although we lived quite far away, my brother and I would spend Christmas vacation and three weeks in the summer with her.  Once my father left it was harder for us to go and see her and sometimes a few years would go by with no visit.  But I would write to her, not as often as she would have liked but I did my best.  When she died I found all the letters I had ever written to her in an envelope among her possessions.   She loved me deeply.   In a family who adored my brother, she was the one person who loved me unconditionally and I knew I was her favourite. 

We had so much fun with our Nan.  She was funny and always up for a good time.  Visits to her were always wonderful.   We felt loved, we got lots of attention, we ate good food from the garden, we had adventures.   I have so many memories of her.  How she would take her teeth out at night and come and scare us with her toothless grin and we would laugh and squeal.   The cream of wheat she would make us for breakfast that was so good and that I can’t recreate to this day.  I don’t know what it was, maybe it was the brand she used, or maybe the kind of brown sugar, or maybe just that it was made with love.  She loved to take us for walks and we’d do the errands.  The post office, the bank, the grocery store.   Everywhere we went people would greet her cheerfully and kids would call out to Auntie Jean.   We would go to Sunday school and feel important because we were the teacher's grandchildren.  We always tried to be so good for her because she was so good to us. 

 

In spite of her lack of real education, my Nan loved to read, and do crossword puzzles.  She got her education from life, and from the books she read.  She never talked about how hard it was to live with my grandfather, but we could see it.  He could barely walk, was deaf, and I never heard him speak a word I understood.  Later I realized he was probably speaking Gaelic since he was from Wales.  He was “senile” and would run away from home on a regular basis.  She would have to go look for him and bring him back home.  Sometimes a neighbour would call and tell her they had found him.  I was told that I loved my Poppa, but I don’t remember being anything other than afraid of him. 

A big part of who I am today is because of her influence.  My love of jigsaw puzzles comes from the memory of the times we spent putting them together at her place.  We had to sing a song every time we got a piece in.   I think of that every time I do a puzzle.  It’s a good memory.   I remember sleeping on a cot between Nan and Poppa’s twin beds and how they snored!!  But to this day snoring doesn’t bother me…it’s a comforting sound that reminds of me of them.  

People were always popping in for visits during the day and she was close to two of her sisters and when the three of them got together there was always a lot of laughter.  My sense of humour definitely comes from my father’s side of the family.   Nan had a wonderful ability to laugh at herself and others.   But she was kind.  She liked to take us with her to the nursing home to visit the residents there.  I remember being afraid of some of them, the ones that were muttering and wandering around lost.  But I loved the old ladies and I remember one in particular who kept talking about her toilet.  Nan said she was sentimental, but she meant senile.  I still love elderly people to this day and I know I got that from her. 

She never had much, but she was always cheerful and I think she taught me that you don’t have to have a lot of money to have a good and meaningful life.   She had a deep faith and talked often about Jesus.

When I was expecting my first child I wanted my Nan to come and stay with me when I had the baby.   But my husband insisted on having his mother there and I didn’t ask her.   The day before my daughter was born Nan was in a serious car accident where everyone died but her.   She was critically injured and ended up losing her leg.  It took me years to stop blaming myself for her accident.  If I had held my ground and insisted that she come and stay with me, she never would have been in that car.  She lived for 7 years after that and then died as a result of complications from her injuries.  She spent the last 5 years of her life in a nursing home.  My husband didn’t like her and never wanted to visit her even though we drove right by her nursing home on the way to see his parents.  If we did stop by it was for a very short time. I felt guilty because the summer she died he refused to go and see her and made me lie and tell her we couldn’t come.  I think she died of a broken heart.

She died in 1987 alone in the nursing home.  Because of a miscommunication, I missed the funeral.  I have never truly grieved for her.   The guilt gets in the way.  I have her harmonica, and a cassette tape of her playing it, and I have never listened to it.  I have the mantle clock that lulled me to sleep every night when we stayed with her.  I can still hear the sound of the chime.  But I have not been able to bring myself to wind it since she died because it’s too painful. 

 

I miss her more than I can say and I wish my children could have known her the way I did.   She would have brought so much into their lives.   They loved to hear the stories about her when they were little.  

I am hoping my grandchildren will have the same fond memories of me as I do of my Nan.  I want to honour her memory in this way.