Five years today and I'm sitting in my garden thinking

Emotional Wellbeing
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Title: Five years today and I’m sitting in my garden thinking

Five years ago today my son James moved back to Manchester with Sophie and the children after their divorce. I knew things weren’t good between James and his ex-wife but I never imagined I’d lose Emma and little Jack too.

Emma was 7 then, Jack was only 4. Emma used to help me in the garden every Sunday morning - we had our special corner where we grew cherry tomatoes and she’d eat half of them before they made it to the kitchen. Jack would follow us around with his little plastic spade, more interested in finding worms than actual gardening but so proud when we let him “help” plant the bulbs.

The last proper conversation I had with Emma was in October 2019. She rang me on James’s phone to tell me about her new teacher. She was excited, chattering away about a class hamster called Biscuit. I can still hear her voice saying “Nan, did you know hamsters can stuff twenty peas in their cheeks?”

Now they’re 12 and 9. I don’t know what subjects Emma likes at secondary school or whether Jack still loves dinosaurs the way he used to. I send birthday cards to James’s address but I don’t know if they receive them. I’ve written so many letters to their mother but I stopped sending them after the solicitor’s letter arrived.

James says he’s trying but every time he mentions me to the children apparently Emma rolls her eyes and says I’m “weird” and Jack just shrugs. These aren’t their words. A 9 year old doesn’t call his grandmother weird for sending presents.

I keep their rooms exactly as they left them. My neighbour Margaret thinks I should turn them into a study but I can’t bear the thought. What if they come back and their things are gone?

The cherry tomatoes are ripening again this week. I sat looking at them this morning and just wept.

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God, this hit me so hard. My eldest finally called after six years and I still keep his room exactly the same - I get why you can’t change theirs.

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God, the cherry tomatoes. that just broke me.

I’m sitting here thinking about my Meera - she’s 8 now and I haven’t seen her properly since she was 6. We used to make rotis together every Saturday, she’d stand on her little step stool and help me roll them out, flour everywhere. She’d always try to make them perfect circles like mine but they’d come out wonky and we’d laugh about it. Now I wonder if she even remembers.

The bit about keeping their rooms the same - yaar, I get it completely. My family keeps saying “move on na, focus on your future” but they don’t understand. How do you move on from your own grandchild? In our community everyone expects you to just fix family problems by talking it through, but when the other side won’t even let you try…

I still buy her favourite biscuits sometimes when I’m shopping. Parle-G. Just in case.

Five years is such a long time in a child’s life. But Emma calling you weird isn’t her talking - you’re right about that. Kids that age don’t think in those terms about grandparents they actually knew and loved.