How to beat the heartache of being a long distance granny
Five years ago i waved my mother goodbye. My son William, ten days old and sleeping peacefully in his grandmother’s arms, was oblivious to the fraught emotions around him. ‘i’ll email, send photos, we can Skype,’ i told my parents as we stood on the porch of my new home, watching my husband Russell load their suitcases into our car. My mother, Helen, handed my newborn back to me and i burst into tears. ‘i don’t want you to go! How am i going to cope without you?’ i cried.
After helping me through that impossibly exhausting first week as a mum, my parents were going home — but because i’d moved to America, home was 6,000 miles away in essex. My heart was breaking and so was my mum’s.
Mingled with my fear about coping without her was my guilt. i had chosen this new life for my family in America, following my dream job as a magazine editor, but in doing so i’d made this happy time terribly difficult for my mum.
Welcome to the world of longdistance grandparenting. There are no statistics on how many pining grannies there are out there, but as the latest UN figures show, five million Brits now live abroad, and many more families within Britain live hundreds of miles apart, it’s little surprise this is one of the most popular topics on Gransnet’s advice forums.
For the grandparents it can be torturous, and for the parents it means struggling on without family support around you.
Five years on, we have a lovely, funny daughter, Matilda, three, as well as William. i try to convince myself i’ve saved my mother from the exhausting life of a career grandmother — a woman expected to be at the beck and call of her children’s children — but i know she wishes things were different.
‘i don’t like it and to dwell on it would depress me,’ admits my mother, when i ask her via WhatsApp how she feels about living so far from us. ‘i’m careful not to moan or get weepy with you in case i drive you away, but i miss the day-to-day, simple things like picking them up from school. i hope i’ve never made you feel guilty.’
if she has, it’s understandable. And my husband and i feel guilty anyway.
My mother has three other grandchildren back in england (my younger brother has two sons and a daughter; they live an hour away from my parents), so she’s not pining away on her own. But i admit we have worked hard to make sure we keep my mum and dad as solid presences in our children’s lives, too. Together, my mum and i have devised ways to help us survive the distance.
EVERY year, they come to stay with us for two weeks, and i bring the children to england for a minimum of three weeks each summer.
Forming a real connection between my parents and the children is helped by sending photos, artwork and cards, and in the weeks before a visit, the children and i count down the days, and make lists of what we want to show them. We also try to time our visits so we can celebrate birthdays, Christmas or Mother’s Day together.
My mother has her own ways of managing. As she tells me: ‘i cope by counting my lucky stars. i’m thankful for Facebook and FaceTime, and grateful we are financially able to visit every year so i have new memories to treasure in quiet moments.’
i am filled with a fear of my children missing out. When there’s a family party back home — a barbecue, say — i know my parents are showering their other grandchildren with affection. And i’m jealous they get to go on trips together, for picnics and fish and chips, like we used to do when i was a child. My children won’t have these memories.
But all that pales into insignificance when i think about what the future holds, when my parents are too old to travel to us any more.
One saving grace has been that my mother and mother-inlaw meet once a month for dinner to sympathise with each other. Far from being rivals, they are great friends.
‘Few of my fellow grandparent friends understand how i feel,’ says my mum. ‘it’s hard to explain the physical longing i have for one-on-one time with William and Matilda, but Janet gets it and we’ve become incredibly good friends. i’d advise anyone who is struggling to befriend a fellow longdistance grandparent.’
Of course, expat life has been good to us, given us jobs and magical memories we wouldn’t have had if we’d stayed put. But is that enough?
We have all learnt to navigate this tricky situation. We have realised family arguments aren’t worth it. Time is precious, so we focus on important things rather than niggles. We make every moment together count.
My children are sociable and confident, i believe, because their family is so spread out — they expect to find people who love them all over the world. They are obsessed with maps and globes, truly believing that the world is their oyster.
Who knows what our future holds? england still feels like home, and our children having a relationship with their cousins is becoming more important to us. Would we move back, if finances made it possible and the timing felt right?
yes, we would. Because england — and our parents — are always in our hearts. So, maybe, just maybe, the grandparents won’t be longdistance for ever.