Three days ago, my last living grandparent died. My yiayia, my maternal grandmother, my second mother, a gigantic character who loved and cared for me since the day I drew my first breath. I am devastated, confused and scared. But writing has always been a form of catharsis for me, a way to express my emotions and let it all out, so I am sitting at my laptop, listening to the rain outside, wiping my tears, trying to make sense of the fact that along with the loss of my yiayia comes the loss of an entire generation of my family.
Today I read an article on losing a generation and evolving as a family. The realisation that now MY father and mother are the grandparents and I am the adult, is scary. I somehow feel I have lost my childhood, I have lost that chance of being taken care of, forever. In the article I read, this stuck with me because it made sense of what I am experiencing right now: “It’s like watching the adults slowly leave the room and realising that you’re the one in charge. You want to scream: ‘Come back! I don’t know what I’m doing’.
My mum said it feels like the end of an era. It really does. I don’t mind people saying the classic: At least she lived a long life or At least you got the chance to say goodbye, I know they don’t mean to hurt me, in fact they think they are helping. My yiayia like my pappou and all the grandparents that have left this world were old people, their bodies could no longer sustain them, their time was up. But that means nothing when you are grieving, when you know you loved someone so much your body is physically reacting to their loss. You simply can’t convince yourself that it’s OK because of an age, a number! You can’t simply say OK I’ve had enough time with them, now they can go! This often means that mourning the loss of a grandparent is neglected and in many cases the person experiencing this trauma finds little sympathy from others.
I had this realisation when I found myself considering whether I should mention my yiayia’s passing on my social media platforms. I could just keep posting various shit or take a week off and say I just needed a break. But why? Why shy away from the fact that I am grieving? Why hide and isolate and risk falling into a deeper hole just because society considers the death of seniors an inevitability?! By slapping on a happy face and shrugging it off, I am doing nothing for my mental health, my body and soul that craves the need to experience raw grief and sadness. Death is not easy to discuss and yet it happens everyday, to everyone.
I have my yiayia’s name. I have her tenacity and her strength. I have her no-bullshit attitude and her big heart. And I have memories of her that could fill pages with stories of love and comfort.
I wrote her eulogy and read it out loud, my knees so weak I thought I was going to drop to the ground at any moment, just like I did the moment I found out she had left this world. Through my written words I spoke to her, to the few who were there that day and to my family in the UK who are struggling. I reminded them that my yiayia was a woman who lived through the loss of a baby girl born before my mum, who they buried in their garden and made a little cross for her. I reminded them how we all came to be in the UK, many of us born there, because my yiayia and pappou left Cyprus in 1958 to seek a better future for their family. That family travelled to London on a boat where men and women and children were divided into two groups. My yiayia travelled on her own to London with four kids and one in her belly. I wanted everyone to know that we have been incredibly blessed to have been raised by a survivor.
That day, in a little chapel, on February 14 2021, on my little boy Danny’s third birthday – oh she loved that baby so very much- I reminded everyone and most of all myself that I was loved so deeply and beautifully by this woman that her soul and her heart will always live within me. Every time I rise, it will be because she lifted me up.
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A little piece dedicated to all the second mothers and fathers we have lost along the way.
