My Saving Grace

Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

If you’d told my grandmother that one day someone would write about her, she wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told her that it would be on a phone with the power of a computer that she hasn’t even heard of, she would have laughed.

And yet she would have been intrigued, fascinated, and engaged. She was never a one for ‘in my day’, she lived in the here and now, and was far more modern than her daughters.

She was also incredibly strong despite having had a pretty brutal life, burying three sons and her husband by the time she was 56. Yes she suffered from horrible depression that often created an unpleasant atmosphere, yes she could be incredibly difficult. But she lived life on her own terms and never quit.

She had strong personal beliefs that she lived, they weren’t just words. And she didn’t live by anyone else’s rules. Three times doctors told her she would die, three times she didn’t. She always said that granddad would tell her when it was her time, and when he did she died…of nothing. In the words of the doctor “she’s packing up from the feet up and when it reaches her heart it will stop”. Which is exactly what happened with three terminal diagnoses lying forgotten at least 7 years in the past.

She taught me to believe and trust what I feel, and not to live by the rules of others. I do my best.

The most important thing though is that she was the antidote to the most negative aspect of my childhood and youth. I don’t like to think of where I’d be without her influence. I’m more me because of her.

She’s long gone and still a real support in my life. Like her I have strong personal-spiritual beliefs, and like her, they sustain me. As she’s over there she’s still a part of that, and me.

Helena Violet Herring, my Nan, isn’t a past positive impact and never will be, she’s still in the here and now, where she always lived. And I’m still grateful.

Total respect Nan

Deb xx