Short story

Christmas isn’t the same for Tilly and Rosie without their beloved Nana

he phone call came just as they were in the middle of eating Christmas lunch. They all looked at each other. “It’s Nana!” Rosie gasped. “You don’t know that for certain,” her father said, although privately he thought she was right. The family had spoken to all their friends and relatives that morning to wish everyone a happy Christmas so the only likely caller was the nursing home.

John’s mother had been in the home for six months. It was their first Christmas without her and they all felt her absence keenly, especially his daughters, Tilly and Rosie. She had lived with them since John’s father had died and their home had been enhanced by her cheerful presence. Nana was a shining light, interested in everything they did and fun to have around.

That morning had been especially hard for the girls. Although they were now in their teens they had always kept up the tradition of opening the Christmas stockings she made specially for them. They used to climb into her double bed, tucked in on each side of their tiny, birdlike grandmother to enjoy the annual ritual of opening each individually wrapped present.

The gifts were things she had been collecting through the year, all chosen to suit the girls’ different personalities and interests. For Rosie, who loved animals and nature, there would be a little book on how to identify moths, a china hedgehog or a beautiful feather from a jay found in the garden. For Tilly,

T‘This year there had been no stockings... Nana was growing increasingly frail’

the artistic one, there might be a box of crayons, a book of Van Gogh postcards or a small picture frame.

The session was never rushed as each item was duly admired and commented on before moving on to the next one. Every year, as December drew near, Nana would say: “I suppose you girls are too old for those stockings now.” They looked aghast and cried: “No! We love them. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without our stockings.”

But this year there had been no stockings. In the spring it had become clear that Nana was growing increasingly frail and, reluctantly, they’d found a nursing home nearby where she could receive the care she needed and the family could visit as often as possible.

Inevitably, Christmas lunch had been more subdued than usual. They had pulled their crackers, read out the awful jokes and tried to be jolly, but all their thoughts were focused on their absent grandmother. They avoided looking at her empty chair and when John raised a glass to toast Nana, the others sombrely raised theirs.

As soon as the phone rang, they instinctively knew that the moment they had all been dreading had come.

Rosie, Tilly and their mother, Joan, watched tensely as John picked up the receiver. There was a long silence as he listened to the voice at the other end of the line. “Thank you. Yes, of course. We’ll come at once,” he said before putting the phone down.

With a grim expression, he turned to the others: “That was the matron. It’s time. The doctor says she is fading fast. We must hurry.”

Abandoning the remains of the turkey, the four of them grabbed their coats and rushed out of the front door, knocking a shower of red berries off the holly wreath in their haste.

When they arrived at the nursing home, the matron was at the door to meet them, a serious expression on her face. They followed her along the corridors to Nana’s room which overlooked the neatly kept grounds of the nursing home.

Their grandmother looked tinier than ever, dwarfed by huge white pillows. One by one, they went to the side of the bed and kissed her gently on the forehead. As John, the last in line, bent over his mother, she opened her eyes briefly and smiled at him. Then she gave a deep sigh, and was gone.

For what seemed like hours, they sat by the bedside, taking it in turns to hold her hand. Several times the

Joan broke the silence, “I keep thinking of the quotation – “Do not cry because I have gone, but smile because I have lived”

matron put her head round the door to check on them until, at last, they forced themselves to say a final farewell and leave.

In the car on the way home, stunned with grief, nobody said a word until Joan broke the silence: “I keep thinking of the quotation, ‘Do not cry because I have gone, but smile because I have lived’.”

“That’s beautiful,” Tilly said. “Nana would have liked that.”

John kept repeating: “She smiled at me. The last thing she did was smile at me.”

“Oh, Dad,” Rosie blurted out through her tears. “Maybe that was because you are still wearing your silly hat from the cracker. You forgot to take it off when we rushed out of the house.”

John looked shocked and put his hand up to his head where the little red bowler hat with a large green feather was still perched jauntily to one side. “Oh, how stupid of me! What on earth must the staff have thought?”

“No, no,” said Tilly. “I think it’s wonderful. It was the last thing she saw and it made her smile. I’m sure she would have loved it.”

It was many weeks later before they plucked up the courage to enter Nana’s old room to start sorting through her belongings. Tilly took the books off the shelf and put them in a box for the charity shop while Joan dealt with the jumpers and blouses neatly folded in the chest of drawers.

Rosie opened the wardrobe door and gasped. “What is it?” Tilly asked.

“Look! Our Christmas stockings! Nana must have done them early in the year, almost as though she knew she wouldn’t be here.”

They lifted the bulging stockings out of the wardrobe and took them over to the bed where they sat, one on each side as they always had, leaving a gap in the middle where Nana would have been.

“Opening them won’t be the same without her,” Tilly said.

“No, it won’t,” Rosie agreed. “But she would have wanted us to do it after all the trouble she took choosing and wrapping our presents.”

Laughing and crying in turns, they explored the contents of the stockings. As they unwrapped and exclaimed over each lovingly chosen surprise, the girls felt their grandmother’s presence. She may have been small in stature, but her personality filled the room. They couldn’t see her sitting between them in her pretty floral nightie, but she was definitely there. And she was smiling.

Penny’s husband is Italian and she has spent many happy years visiting Italy and trying to speak the language. They have four children and seven grandchildren.