Forgive me

for being absent. My grandmother, to whom I have always been very close, died last week. In March I went down to see her for what I was fairly certain would be the last time, and it was wonderful to see her but very hard to say goodbye. I had, in fact, just made a plane reservation to go down for a couple of stolen days last week–we knew the end was coming, and I wanted to see her one more time (I felt rather childishly desperate to do so)–when my mother called to say that she had died.

My grandmother’s unusual first name is also mine, and it is quite odd to be the only one left. I’ve never known another person with our name. I am wearing her father’s wedding ring, which was taken off her finger after her death. I am determined not to think about any of this. I can’t quite do it yet.

She died at home, in her bed, and it was (it seems) a death free from pain. She was ninety-four years old. Her night nurse, a lovely woman, was with her when she died.

I wish I had been, too.