Knowing, loving and losing my grandparents, 14 years apart

Gramps and I, December 2008

Things I remember about my grandma’s death. She died 13 days before my eleventh birthday, in November 2001. She’d started having headaches in about September. I remember because it was around the time of 9/11, and the combination of events made it seem like there was this sombre shadow over the world.

She was in hospital from about October. I remember sitting in the waiting room in Watford General. There was a vending machine that served what I thought was the world’s greatest hot chocolate. It was the kind made with hot water, which formed these little lumps you could scoop out with your finger and bite into to release a burst of sugared chocolate powder. I would take this full-scale stuffed toy dog with me every time we went. It was a Yorkshire terrier (non-dog speakers’ translation: little, long hair, yippy).

I remember the smell. It must have been a certain brand of disinfectant that smelled forcibly clean. It wasn’t overpowering or heavy, but it seeped through the air and into your clothes and into my grandma, pushing out her usual scent of cardigans and walks in fields and cigarettes.

I was only 10 and no one I was so close to had died before. I believed she was going to get better with the same level of helpless faith that I had in God with a capital G and true love and my parents always being right. Every time the adults had one of their conversations in low, worried tones, peppered with medical terms and the phrase ‘brain tumour’, I maintained that simple expectation that she would be fine. Of course she would be fine. I knew they were all worried, but my belief never faltered.

I can tell you the exact place I was sitting when my mum told us that she was going to die. I was in the back right seat of her Ford Mondeo. My sister was in the passenger seat, my brother was next to me. We were going round a bend on the A404, at the point where you can take a right and go to this tiny village that is basically just a pub and some bored sheep. She said, ‘You do know that Grandma isn’t going to get better?’ None of us answered, but it felt like something I’d put high on a shelf fell off and shattered. I could hear Claire sobbing in the front.

So I only had 10 and a bit years with my grandma. I remember her short grey hair and her big round glasses, which she was always pushing up the bridge of her nose. I remember she made really good tents out of bedsheets and read us stories about teddy bears going to a haunted house and let us run through their tiny bungalow and jump on the bed like little maniacs. I remember her long floral skirts. I remember the taste of her ham sandwiches: airy white bread, olive spread, and ham sliced to this certain thickness, all cut into squares. I remember long walks and feeding ducks and the time this swan went for me (they are seriously vicious bastards) and she stepped right between us, put her finger up and said, ‘No.’ You bet that swan backed the hell off.

I sometimes wonder what our relationship would have been like if she’d known me through all my teenage years and as an adult. Those are the tough ones, after all, the ones where your generational differences start to show and you have to find the balance between needing them and loving them all the time, and reminding them that you are your own person, capable of surviving away from them and making your own life decisions.

Life changed for us all after Grandma Diz died. We all called her Dizzy, but her actually rather excellent name was Audrey Beryl May. I learned that the world isn’t fair, in the way that kids only really learn things when bad stuff happens to them. Meanwhile, in grown up world, my dad and aunt had lost their mother and my grandad was coping with losing the love of his life.

I won’t pretend that I remember what my grandparents’ marriage was like, because as I said before, I was under 11 the entire time, and mostly concerned with my Anastasia Barbie and the fate of the Spice Girls. But I remember my grandad on the day of the funeral. He looked lost. Like someone who’d been dropped in a desert and left to navigate his way out alone, with no compass or map to help.

Slowly and with lots of help from my aunt and Dad, he put together a life. At first, he would still pick my sister and I up from school on a Tuesday. I would make us both tea – his very strong, one Sweetex – and we’d have to sit and try to make conversation across this enormous gap of experience and age.

A lot of people, including both my parents, several employers and café customers, have bemoaned my tea-making skills. But never Gramps.

So I went through my awkward teenage years with my quiet, withdrawn grandad instead of my lively, fun-loving grandma. He wasn’t a great conversationalist, especially not with a 13 year old girl. I would avoid talking about her for fear of upsetting him. These conversations were tricky, but I did learn about his life.

He was in the army doing national service, and was stationed in Italy at one point. He was a crack shot and won a medal in a shooting competition, but he couldn’t afford to keep it up after leaving. He worked in a metal workshop – he was very good at shaping it into whatever he wanted. He needed a constant supply of Wine Gums. He was the kind of loyal Arsenal fan who wouldn’t shout at the TV but just stick out the rough and smooth with determined faith. When he was younger he enjoyed playing football, and he was still into golf and snooker, but those things gradually left him when the call of the armchair in the bungalow he had shared with Grandma became more appealing than a bustling snooker hall.

What was most welcoming was that Gramps was not one of those people fiercely clinging on to outdated values purely because they can’t accept the world has changed. He lived in a sort of bubble, with two TVs and the curtains drawn. He wasn’t interested enough in the world to judge people beyond whether they were hurting others or not. I never heard him say anything racist or homophobic. His motto was ‘Each to their own’, even if he couldn’t quite make sense of the ins and outs of things.

Yes, he could be difficult, and his waning interest in leaving the house and life beyond knowing the lottery numbers, Arsenal score and that we were all OK was frustrating, especially for people who did a lot for him with very little thanks. He was stubborn and tactless, often telling me that he didn’t have much to say and he did nothing all day. Not the greatest conversation starters. But that makes it all the more touching that he did push aside the fog of gloom that descended when Grandma died in order to call us just to say hello.

He’d had headaches and neck pains and emphysema for many years, which made breathing and moving difficult. He still got washed and dressed every day, even if it was just to lie on his bed. His hearing was good enough to listen to a conversation, and it was only in the last few months over Christmas that he became forgetful and confused to a worrying degree. I got to tell him that I’m getting married, which he was delighted about. In January we found out that he had an infection in his pacemaker, which could possibly be treated but would result in reduced mobility. Ultimately, it was the combination of this and an intense hip operation that finally wore him down, and he died at around 8pm on 20 January.

I had an idyllic child’s relationship with Grandma Diz that never had to overcome divided opinions or tension or the strain of miscommunication. And I also feel privileged to have got to know my grandad’s white haired self, as well as a snapshot of him in his prime, over the years when our age gaps made communicating that much harder. He might not have been perfect, but he was him, and that was enough. And I will miss him for being perfectly, imperfectly himself.

9 life lessons I learned fighting anorexia

I held many misconceptions about anorexia until I got it. I thought it was for supermodels and people who didn’t like food. All you had to do was look out for the person with matchstick legs moving a salad leaf round a plate in the pizza restaurant, and then force feed them a sandwich.

And then it happened to me. Long story short, I started losing weight and I couldn’t stop. It wasn't a diet or a life choice or a career move. It was lonely and terrifying.

After ten months of treatment, I’ve just had my last appointment with my incredibly patient clinical psychologist. Throughout this process, I learned a lot about this disease, myself and the complicated relationships we all have with our brains and bodies. Here’s the skinny.   

Translating what it’s like to be you is hard

To shamelessly bastardise a quote from David Foster Wallace, we are all marooned in our own skulls. You can’t climb inside my brain to see what it’s like, and I can’t do that for you. Which means trying to explain why we each think what we do is hard.

Here’s how I would describe my anorexia. So I guess a person without it would think, ‘I like burgers. You like burgers. Let’s go eat burgers and life will be glorious in our juicy, meaty, carb-heavy world of fast food heaven.’ Everything in moderation, right? When anorexia runs this ‘Let’s get burgers’ scenario through its mad machine, the result is that it starts shouting that if you eat one burger tonight, you’ll end up eating three tomorrow and every day for the rest of your life and you will never stop eating, resulting in a waistline to rival the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man. And everyone will hate you and no one will ever love you, even the cats you try to collect will reject you in favour of the bloke down the road who lets them piss on the sofa.

That’s a simplified version. As you go on, the machine gets extended, adding more foods that you can’t eat and more rules and an ever decreasing calorie counter. It also gets a power boost, so it shouts even louder. It’s powered by a lot of things, including body dysmorphia (that’s a whole topic by itself). I’m aware that it’s not me coming up with these thoughts, and it’s not something I built, but it’s something I had to live with and then take apart.

Fighting a mental illness takes courage

Throughout all this, a lot of people have told me that I was brave. I’m not great with compliments, but now I can look back as the version of me who got through it, I’m able to say, fuck, actually, I was brave. Since anorexia convinces you that putting on weight indicates a lack of will power, asking someone to help you stop it makes you feel like a loser who’s giving in.

Fuck that.

A wise man (Dumbledore) said that ‘It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.’ Let alone yourself. Anorexia was the bully cornering me in the toilets and telling me I was worthless, and I was George McFly landing a solid one on its jaw.

Admitting to yourself that you don’t have this in hand is hard. Admitting to other people that you need help is hard. Trusting them to stick around is hard. Getting through every single time you have to eat when something inside you is screaming to stop is hard. No question there are shittier things you can go through, but this was my big battle, my Minas Tirith. And I’m proud of the girl who took it on. She was brave.

It’s OK to trust other people

I’m not one for relying on other people too much. In my head, the anorexia made me proud of my immense will power, but it was embarrassing to admit out loud that I had this thing that makes even the simplest eating situation feel complicated. Also, as a loud and proud feminist, I hated the thought that other women would think I was judging them by the insane standards I held myself to. Why would someone put up with a person so seemingly judgemental and totally neurotic, let alone love them?

None of the people I told pushed me away. No one told me I was weak or pathetic or a terrible person who should stop worrying about my first world problems. Most made the effort to understand that weird machine in my head.

None of you will know what you did for me. Like Buffy and the Scoobies, I was the one fighting the demons every day, but you were the ones sharpening the stakes and hitting the books and giving me CPR. Even when I panicked and stressed and tried to run, you followed me and sat with me on that path to madness and uncertainty until I could get up and walk back. Trusting other people with your weird things, whether it’s small like needing to walk on the right, or big like anorexia, is hard but worth it.

People around you will make mistakes and that’s OK

It’s hard to get your head around what it’s like to have anorexia if you’ve never experienced it. You have to be as patient with the people who are making the effort to muddle their way through and support you as they are with you.

One example is the apparently innocent sentence ‘You look well.’ To an anorexic in recovery, this translates to ‘You’ve put on weight’ which, of course, sets the machine off. I realised I had to take a step back and understand that what they were trying to say was that I’m moving towards being normal instead of this weird skeletal version of me. Which is the point, after all. I learned to remind myself that they’re coming from a different point of view, and once I’d accepted this I started to love hearing this sentence. It reinforced the sense that anorexia is not normal, which is what I needed to help me change my mind. Other stuff is more hurtful, but if you try and explain why something is unhelpful, people will know not to do it again. If they choose to, they’re a dick.

There are heroes in the NHS

Anorexia is an illness. It’s not an emotional state. It’s not something you choose. It’s not a phase. It needs a tailored and planned out treatment, like any other disease. The shame around mental illness makes it hard to find the courage to ask for help. The first time I told a GP that I was losing weight was at an appointment for something unrelated. Sitting in that chair, in the comforting clinical anonymity of a surgery, I suddenly blurted out that I had been deliberately not eating enough. When I told her it was because of stress, she calmly told me to join an art class. There was one down the road. Get out and make some friends and you’ll be fine.

So that was fun.

Luckily, just hearing my own voice saying this out loud gave the part of me who could see where this was all leading the power to shout back. It’s the first time I said no to the bully. I went back and I found the GP who would save my life. At the moment when I needed it most, the NHS stepped up (in a way). She listened to me describe what I was doing to myself, just as you would listen to someone telling you their physical symptoms. She made me do blood tests and come back just to talk about how I was doing, and to keep an eye on my ever plummeting weight. She treated it like a medical condition, not just some stupid shallow problem I would grow out of. I will always be grateful to the stranger who saved me.

The NHS needs to change how it treats mental health

Both of us knew that these visits were like putting a plaster on a wound that’s bleeding out. What I needed was counselling. Ultimately, it would have taken about a year from when I was diagnosed to getting to see an actual NHS counsellor who leads you through the ‘refeeding’ process (that phrase always made me feel like a cow waiting to end up in a Big Mac) and all the CBT. When you’re losing 2lbs a week, this is not time you have. I read a news piece that said more people are dying of eating disorders because they’re not getting treatment in time, to which my response is a loud and angry ‘Duh’. I was lucky enough that my parents were willing and able to pay for private treatment. And it’s infuriating that other people who don’t have that support are stuck with this system.

Your body is strange and amazing

The recovery process is a weird and terrifying and wonderful journey through how your body can adapt to look after you. From a totally cold scientific view, it’s actually very interesting. When you deny your body food, it goes into this weird setting called starvation mode that changes how you respond to things. Some stuff makes sense: your body’s priority is to keep your heart beating and your brain ticking and your muscles happy, so when you’re not getting much energy it’s going to use every crumb to focus on these, and be damned other stuff, like hair, hormones, bones and less important organs. The funny thing is that you don’t realise how shitty and worn down you feel until you start eating more. One day you stand up and the world doesn’t spin and it’s a revelation.

Other stuff that happens is totally random and seemingly unrelated. Scientists at the University of Minnesota did some studies on conscientious objectors in the '40s to find out about starvation and refeeding. Turns out not everyone in Minnesota is nice. It was weird to read about things and think ‘Oh that’s why I do that!’ For example, needing food to be very hot. Like burn-your-tongue-and-fan-your-mouth-like-an-idiot hot. And developing the urge to hoard things, like clothes and books and DVDs (yes, I will happily blame that on my eating disorder.) And when you do let yourself eat, you can’t stop. I would be so full I felt sick but still keep going. And that’s totally normal.

It’s hard adapting to your new body

When you first start putting on weight, your poor body doesn’t really know what to do with it, so it basically shoves it around all your organs, which are centred in your torso area. Sadly, this is the bit I get fixated on. Looking in the mirror and seeing your once concave stomach look huge and bloated can trigger that anorexic machine to go into overdrive and tell you to stop, stop now. This is why constant support, an objective voice, is so important. If you keep going, keep eating, keep listening to your therapist, your body will realise, ‘Oh, OK, that wasn’t a one-off burst of energy that we needed to store for All Of Time, we can start working with this extra bit of Us’ and it will move it to other places.

Like your boobs.

I’d pretty much bid mine farewell, and then suddenly, running across the street to catch a bus, I felt this vaguely familiar jiggle of protest. It was like an invitation back to the club of bras and curves and looking like a healthy adult woman. It was something to focus on when I was staring at the newly emerging bits of me. Putting on that much weight often makes you feel like an overstuffed sausage, so finding little glimmers and positives among that misery really helps.

Look for the humour in every situation

It’s a very heavy topic…

… Groan.

But seriously, the thoughts anorexia produces are so ridiculous you have to laugh sometimes. It’s probably not a good idea to initiate the joke, since you might not know how the person is feeling about it all at that moment. Thoughts on your weight change like the British weather – from sunshine to showers with no warning. My own sense of humour got me through some of my toughest challenges, and while people struggle when I break out these slightly sick jokes at times, I actually love it when they take my lead and join in. Learning to laugh puts things in perspective and reminds you that there are more important things going on than the calorie content of a muffin.

I wrote this to be read, so please share if you feel like it.

I never thought this would be something I would have to face all day, every day. I didn’t see it coming the first time, so I won’t pretend to be able to predict the future and say it’s never coming back, hand me that burger so I may toast my resounding and permanent victory over this weird machine. Truthfully, it will probably be something I have to keep dealing with. But I have the tools and the team and the life lessons behind me, so I’ll be ready to take it on and win again.

Running with it: a novice runner's revelation

'Attention please, this is a platform alteration...'

It’s 6:15am, and the only people around town are either being paid to be there, or are on their way to be paid to be somewhere else. Most other people of sound mind are either sleeping or hunched zombie-like over breakfast, attempting to conjure up semblance of consciousness from their cornflakes. This just leaves the runners, bootcampers and cyclists who have dragged themselves out of bed, shoved their sleep-deprived bodies into Lycra and pushed them out the door for a dose of early morning exercise. To my shock and occasional horror, I am now one of this mad part of the population.

I’ve had an on-off relationship with running, mostly off. There were the PE lessons when we were sent to shiver or sweat a few laps around the track in the name of the curriculum and my school’s ‘Sports Mark Gold’ status. Then there was a fairly steady period in the Easter term of my first year at uni, which saw me doggedly running round the lake, being casually overtaken by lean and limber athletes while I tried to make it through one Killers track without having a heart attack. Sadly, a summer job as a chambermaid put paid to any serious fitness ambitions, since after a day of making beds, cleanings rooms and pushing a trolley the weight of a baby elephant around, I could barely drag my body to the fridge let alone put in a couple of miles of running. Seriously, chambermaids are the secret superheroes of the service industry. But that’s a post for another time.

Then, finally, there was a ‘Stress Run’ in January. Facing the potent combination of a 12,000 word dissertation and a recent break-up, all set in the arctic conditions of a student house, I snapped, dug out some antique trainers, a hoody and woolly hat, and threw myself down the street with a playlist of angsty lovelorn songs for company. I charged along for about three and a half minutes before heartburn set in. Love hurts.

Interestingly, it was stress that sent me running this time, too. My dad had just brought me back from university for the last time, leaving behind my friends, my independence, and the life I had spent three years building. I stood in my room, staring at the blank walls and piles of boxes, grabbed the same old antique trainers and decided to run it out. So off I went, down the roads I’d run during the aforementioned Easter sessions. Except that instead of getting round the route once and collapsing, as anticipated, I kept going. And going. And going. And then I ran home and collapsed. Looking back now, I only ran about two miles, but for someone who had taken weeks to get past five minutes several years before, this newfound fitness was enough to make me go out again. The challenge of improving gave me something to focus on, when everything else seemed to be covered in a fog.

Although I’ve only been going for a few weeks, I have learned a lot from running. Some of it is practical, and some of it is personal. For example, I still believe that Lycra was invented for currently fit people to show off their current fitness, and that joggers are just as good, but I have discarded my antique trainers for a pair of shiny pink running shoes. The noticeable difference led my poor feet to break into a totally involuntary jig. While we’re talking about feet, I now also understand terms like over-pronation (when the arch of your foot rolls inwards as you walk) and, unfortunately, plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the tissue or ligaments in the bottom of your foot. It really sucks, but more on that later.)

However, at the risk of sounding like a coach addressing his underdog team in a sports films, the most important lessons I have learned from running have been the ones that taught me something about myself. To get out of bed, throw on your shiny pink running shoes and boldly declare your intention to run or keel over trying is to take charge of your own body and your own goals. No matter what else is going on in your life, you have the opportunity to challenge yourself to improve at something. When I’m running, I am the one who has to push myself up that hill, to the next tree, all the way home, in thirty degrees or pouring rain. Thus, when it goes right, I can look back and see that yes, that bit where the guy with the zimmerframe overtook me was hard going, but I got through it, and I did it on my own. Of course, when it goes wrong, I’m also the one who has to pick myself up (sometimes literally) and agree that it will go better next time, but that’s part of taking responsibility for achieving my own aims.

Having decided to challenge yourself, you can always go further than you think. There’s a particular road on my regular route that I dread because it’s the point where images of myself walking home in the rain, with aching legs and the embarrassment of failure start floating before my eyes. But even as I picture this, my legs are still going (even if it’s at a speed that means snails are getting impatient with me) and eventually I catch a second wind (though it’s more likely endorphins). Not only will I get to where I planned, but the sense that I’ve triumphed over adversity means that my slightly disbelieving self, marvelling that my legs are, in fact, still moving beneath me, will possibly continue to run further than I planned.

While it’s important to push yourself, you also need to listen to your body. I don’t mean stop running the moment something starts complaining that this is all too much, and it would really rather go back to bed with a giant plate of eggs on toast and a bucket of tea, thanks. There are times when your brain needs to tell your body to stop whining and keep moving. Or to get up off the pavement or road and get running again. There are other times, however, when you need to allow it to have a rest. I learnt this the hard way, when my sudden surge in activity and some poorly chosen footwear landed me with the aforementioned plantar fasciitis.

It may sound like a plant species bred by Nazis, or maybe a planet from a sci-fi film, but it’s actually a painful condition in your foot. To get some idea, imagine there’s a piece of very tight elastic starting in your heel and running the length of your sole. Every time this elastic is forced to stretch (so when you walk or dare to move your foot too fast), it feels like someone is stabbing all along your sole with something pointy. At this point, you have to accept that no matter how much you might like to be out there, sweating and aching and red-faced,  you need to take care of this first. Running has taught me to appreciate my body as a pretty awesome machine, capable of more than it’s been given credit for, but also that in order to keep it, er, running well, I also need to give it attention, rest and scrambled eggs on toast.

In the last few weeks, I’ve transformed from a running novice with antique trainers and no clue to a running novice with shiny pink running trainers and a new perspective on what I can achieve. It’s hard, and there are times in every run where I want to stop, but the sense of control and achievement that comes when I don’t makes it worthwhile. If I, who couldn’t run through ‘Human’, can learn to run solidly for fifty minutes, there’s a good chance that anyone else with two working legs and reasonable health (and many without these) can too. There is a method to the 6am madness, so postpone the cornflakes, dig out some shoes, and run with it.

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