Fighting spirit earn ed her the name Nanny Nine Lives
MY NAN IRENE
After she died, we went through a box of my Nan’s old documents. right at the bottom was one of her school reports, so tatty we could barely read what the teacher had written about her in 1942: ‘She has a pleasant, courteous manner and is thoroughly reliable and trustworthy’.
that description of my lovely Nanny was as true when she died in March this year as it was when she was just 14. No matter how awful your day, the minute you opened Nan’s door, you’d be greeted with a big smile and a ‘Hello, darlin’!’ She just made everything better.
rene, as everyone called her, was the last child born into a big east end family. She was a proper east ender,
who, even when she moved to Dagenham in Essex, never gave up her love of jellied eels or fish and chips.
Hers was a tough childhood. She lost a brother in the war and another sister died at the age of 12 from a heart condition.
Nan always said that if it was now, her sister wouldn’t have died because the NHS would have saved her. She came to know all about what the NHS could do at a young age, spending six months in hospital with a bad break in her leg after falling off her bike.
As a young woman she worked in a bank for a while, but mostly she devoted herself to her family — her own three children, then five grandchildren and a greatgrandson, too. Sadly, my Grandad Charles died as they were settling into retirement. But Nan built a new life for herself, although it wasn’t without drama.
In 1990, she had a bad fall and broke her leg — the same one she’d injured in childhood. We didn’t know if she would walk again, but she did and headed off to Australia and then took a cruise down the Danube.
Ill health, though, plagued the final chapters of her life. She survived an aneurysm but had another fall, breaking a hip, shoulder and wrist. This time, doctors said, she wouldn’t walk again. Again she proved them wrong. A stroke, pneumonia and a heart attack — she battled through them all, earning her the family nickname ‘Nanny Nine Lives’.
Her luck was bound to run out, and it did when she suffered another hip fracture and was then diagnosed with cancer. She was still smiling and joking right up until the end. She was a fighter, blessed with immense spirit and determination.
I saw her every week of my life, and it’s hard to adjust to the idea of a world without my Nan in it. But I had her longer than most. For that, I will always be grateful. irene Page, born January 15, 1928, died March 9, 2018, aged 90.