Why I weep for the grandparents robbed of life’s greatest gift – a tiny warm hand in yours
By ESTHER RANTZEN who’s just welcomed twin girls to her brood of grandchildren
LAST week I was introduced to Florence and Romilly Wilcox when they were just a few hours old. Kelly, their mother, looked exhausted, happy and rightly thrilled that she had produced twins, each weighing well over 6lbs.
Joshua — their father and my son — looked as proud as if he’d given birth himself. And I, their grandmother, was overawed. I’d forgotten that brand new babies are such tiny scraps of life, utterly dependent. The girls felt so fragile I hardly dared hold them, balancing them carefully in my arms.
My first granddaughters. To my eyes they are already beautiful with their mist of blonde hair, tiny upturned noses and skin like rose petals. I cannot wait to watch them grow and turn into individual characters, to introduce them to the songs my grandmother sang me, to read the poems my mother read to me. What luck. What a privilege to be a grandmother.
At the age of 77 I am beginning to face the truth — I am not immortal after all and my future is limited. If I’m lucky I could have another 20 years, but I will have to be extraordinarily fortunate to remain as active and healthy as I am now. So what gives me hope in the future — however long that is — is this sudden gift of grandchildren.
I came quite late to the grandmother club. I was well into my 70s when my daughter Rebecca presented me with my first grandson, Benji, who’s now five.
I’d spent years watching friends turning into gooey, sentimental grannies, forever showing me their latest photos and telling me anecdotes about the toddler geniuses in their family.
I smiled graciously, and tried to be tolerant, all the while telling myself this would never happen to me. How wrong I was. I am now the most sentimental and gooey grandparent of the lot.
Before Florence and Romilly arrived I already had three grandsons. One of them, Teddy, aged two, is now the twins’ big brother. He approaches them gingerly, and his tenderness makes us all applaud. He has a smile as golden as sunshine. He calls me ‘Etta’ and loves putting me on the naughty step — and ‘releasing’ me with kisses.
THE twins and Teddy live over 200 miles away, in the West Country, where I spent ten fabulous days trying to be helpful, but really just loving being with the new members of the family.
As well as Benji, my daughter Rebecca gave me another grandson, Xander, who’s two, and they live close enough for me to see them regularly. After Benji was born, when a friend asked whether I visited him often, I replied ‘Not more often than once or twice a day’.
And it was true. I would arrive at breakfast, and again at baby tea-time. As the children grew into toddlers we played hideand-seek behind the curtains, and they would lead me upstairs for bath-time, which would inevitably leave me drenched.
‘Mum, don’t you ever say no?’ Rebecca asked me sternly, witnessing the children literally running rings around me. ‘No, why?’ I answered, nonplussed. Does any grandmother say no?
A friend who is also a besotted grandmother once told me: ‘I love my children, but I am in love with my grandchildren.’ And that is just how it feels. When I know I’m going to see them, I feel exhilarated. When I leave them, I may be physically tired from chasing them around the kitchen, but they have revived me spiritually and given me strength. And I know that is not an illusion.
A charming Channel 4 documentary recently showed how the company of four-year-olds lifted the spirits of the residents of an old people’s home, and gave them physical and mental vitality. Grandchildren are good for you. They exercise your body and mind. When you look after them, you look after yourself, too.
After my husband Desmond died 17 years ago, my children were invaluable in their support. But, all the same, in the dozen years I was on my own before my grandchildren were born, I desperately missed the fun I used to have with Desmond, the physical affection he gave me, the warm hugs I used to take for granted.
Now I get plenty of them. When I kissed Benji goodnight a couple of weeks ago, he looked up at me with huge brown eyes and said: ‘Next time, Etta, bring your nightie, then you can sleep over.’ It was the best invitation I’d had for years!
I know how lucky I am to have this close relationship with both my children and grandchildren. Grandchildren are the best antidote to loneliness — and loneliness is a killer.
I know that from official figures which have linked it with depression and malnutrition in old people. Loneliness can be as dangerous to physical and mental health as obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
I also know it from callers to The Silver Line, the helpline for isolated older people I launched nearly four years ago. There is an epidemic of loneliness, affecting millions of older people and destroying their confidence and feelings of self-worth. This makes the presence of grandchildren in people’s lives so invaluable.
Take this letter I received from a lady called Ellen, from Cornwall. She wrote to tell me that since she lost her husband her life has become ‘another pointless day when I’m a waste of space... I find myself talking to the TV, how sad is that! I dread the winter nights when everything seems to close in around me and I feel so isolated.
‘If it wasn’t for my grandson, whom I love dearly, I would have nothing to live for.’
Not every grandparent is in such a fortunate position. It has been estimated that over a million grandparents are prevented from having any access to their grandchildren, which seems tantamount to cruelty to me.
I discovered this hidden tragedy some years ago when I was contacted by Jane Jackson, who founded the Bristol Grandparents Support Group, and has herself been prevented from seeing her granddaughter since 2007. I have heard of Christmas cards and presents returned, of phone calls refused.
Jane told me some of the reasons this tragedy can happen. Separation and divorce can lead to great bitterness. Misunderstandings become a long-lasting feud. Bereavement can create a rift which becomes permanent.
Indeed Jane has described the loss of her own grandchild as a living bereavement, and she knows how agonising it is.
HER tale is fairly typical: her son divorced and lost contact with his wife and daughter, meaning the little girl, who would now be 18, was excised from her grandparents’ lives, too. Jane hasn’t seen her since the girl was seven.
Having met some of the grandparents Jane supports, I agreed to become a patron of the charity. This week she forwarded to me some of the desperate cries for help she has received from grandparents deprived of their grandchildren.
‘I long to feel their little hands creep into mine when they feel insecure and hear them laugh,’ wrote one.
‘To have them back in my life would mean more than all the
Have you been banned from seeing your grandchildren? Tell us your story at: femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk
gold in Fort Knox,’ another wrote. ‘It is like part of me is missing, an emptiness, like the feeling when someone close dies. It is torture with the tantalising possibility of a resolution. It is that possibility that makes us unable to let go and move on because it might, just might, end happily.’
‘Sad, empty; there are even times I feel suicidal. I have such a huge longing for family as it used to be, but doubt it will ever be the same again (although I do keep a little hope alive),’ came another.
‘My grandchildren were taken away from me not once but twice. The first time my daughter did apologise and said she regretted her actions. But I felt like I was treading on eggshells.
‘Now, after five years, I agree it is like a living bereavement words cannot describe. I often wonder what the boys do actually think and ask about their grandparents and what their mother and father are actually telling them.
‘I feel we are all missing out on their milestones and achievements, but most of all it’s the hands around your neck and Nannie and Grandad cuddles and kisses. I no longer want to live without my grandchildren in my life.’
A few of these grandparents feel so desperate they have gone to court to fight for the right to see their grandchildren. Under English law they have had to ‘prove’ their relationship with ‘evidence’ such as family photographs. It’s an expensive process, and even if they win, there is no real way to enforce the court’s decision.
French law is better. It explicitly declares that all children have the right to access to their extended families, especially grandparents. Jane Jackson says it would take just a tiny alteration to the Children Act to include the extended family and grandparents to the provisions for a child’s welfare. ‘After all,’ she says, ‘every child has the right to a loving and caring relationship with their grandparents, unless it is proven unsafe for the child.’ And surely she is right.
Loving and caring — that is the key, and what we grandparents want to offer. That’s what we do, if we are allowed to. After all, there are a million different ways we can show our love and our care — with practical gifts, like a chicken casserole or a freshly cooked fish pie, indispensable baby-sitting duties, help with the mortgage or a lift to the day nursery.
What do we grandparents get in return? The best gift in the world: a tiny, warm hand in yours, and the invitation to play hide-and-seek behind the curtains. They give us so much to look forward to and hope for in our older years.
Florence and Romilly, I simply can’t wait.