When I was a child, my Nana was the most magical person. She would carry two giggling children at a time up the stairs tucked under her arms, claiming that she was carrying two sacks of potatoes. Every morning she stretched in bed, and when she came to visit all of us grandchildren would run down to the guest room and climb in bed with her and stretch. Arms up! Out! Up! Over! Legs up! Out! Together! Bicycle!

Nana was born in Nottingham, England. Her mother died when she was a baby and her older sisters brought up her and her brother, just a year older. They played in Sherwood Forest as children. Her father was quite strict, and she and her brother were very close, but he was killed in the Great War and she never got over mourning him.

Nana came to Canada to work in a lace factory as a teenager. On the boat from England, she was in second class, but the captain paired her up with a girl who was sailing first class by herself, and the two became pals. My Nana bobbed her long hair onboard along with her friend, something her father would have been horrified to see.

After Nana started working in Quebec, she found that the French Canadian girls were very cruel. They would cut her threads when she went on a break and call her mean names. When her older sister asked her to come to New York City to help her with her babies, my Nana hitched a ride on a motorcycle and came immediately. She never left the US, which made her an illegal immigrant, since she never had a visa or green card or anything like.

Nana met and married my grandfather, a big blustering Irishman, a union man who worked for Con Edison. Their marriage never seemed terribly happy, but they certainly were strong personalities and I loved them both a great deal. Nana, a Protestant, raised her two children as Catholics and shocked the priest at one point by asking for instruction to enter the Church fully. She worked at the school and was always present to help out in the parish so he had had no idea that she was not Catholic!

Nana was a looker, and loved style. She always instructed us grandchildren to avoid debt but only buy the best quality.

In her later life, Nana had severe emphysema and mostly stayed in her apartment. We grandchildren would take the bus to visit her after she and my grandfather moved out of NYC to an apartment closer to my parents. When I was able to drive, I would pick up her groceries and bring them to her house, where she would feed me and we’d play some gin rummy.

By the time I was a senior in college, it was clear Nana was not going to be with us much longer. Always super independent, she refused to leave her home and had a Do Not Resuscitate order on her frig. My family supported her decisions. Right after graduation, my mother asked me to do something for Nana. My mother had to be at a conference for her work — she was a nurse in charge of infection control for local hospitals — but she did not want her mother to be alone. So I lived with Nana for most of the last week of her life. I tried to make her food which she could not eat, or read her books which tired her, or rub lotion on her swollen and cracked feet. One night I fell asleep but was awakened by the sound of my Nana. She had tried to go to the bathroom by herself and had fallen. That was probably the hardest moment in my life, trying to gather Nana up from the floor and get her back together and to bed again. I was so afraid she was going to die there, and I knew I was not to call anyone. I cradled her, my beautiful strong Nana who used to carry me under her arm, and carried her to her room as best I could and tucked her in bed again.

My mother came back from the conference the next day, and came to her mother’s, and she died the next day while I was not there anymore. For years afterward, my siblings and myself would catch ourselves thinking we heard Nana’s voice singing out in our house, but of course she was gone.

I have an old winter cap of hers in my memory box, and it retains my Nana’s smell, a mixture of Jean Nate and her own self. It even has a couple of white Nana hairs caught in the wool. I pull out the cap occasionally to sniff it and think of her. I still love her and look forward to seeing her again.