It begins and it ends with her hands. Busy, dancing hands, a ring finger missing on the left, lost to a door that slammed shut on it many years ago. And it ends with me holding her hand, a rosary clutched in the other, counting out together over 30 years of love. 

We lost Pamela this week, and it’s the end of an era for our family. My grandmother was a creative force to be reckoned with. A gifted dressmaker who would study patterns from Vogue, and always made me the best silk “frocks” as a child. Her home was a miniature Botanical Garden, and she could recite the Latin name for every plant she nurtured. She was an excellent host, cook and a life-long feeder, and we make many of her recipes to this day. There was no artistic project she didn’t turn those curious hands to - painting, jewellery-making, mosaics, ceramics, stained glass, you name it, Pamela had tried it all. She would keep rolls of wallpaper and unfurl them like a scroll for me to endlessly doodle on. Granny always encouraged my creative pursuits, and she was so proud when I was accepted into art college. 

Since the 1950’s, my grandparents had lived in a granite fortress by the sea and my childhood memories are impossible to separate from that permanent fixture in Dublin Bay. Inside their home was an Aladdin's cave adorned with unusual trinkets - shelves heaving with blue glass, silk wall hangings, dried Hydrangeas, drawers of pearls, collections of gemstones and rare butterflies. Outside, the garden was a jungle we’d explore and get lost in, jumping off the craggy rocks and the lethal Martello tower walls (when Granny wasn’t looking). The tall, wild grass slapped our knees as we ran through it, and we plucked raspberries and gooseberries for Granny’s jam-making. She fed and befriended the local crows, who still watch over her little patch of green in the middle of the sea. Recently, they have started to court my mother, who felt the need to explain that Pamela has left us.

Gran was fiercely independent, and boarding-school stoic, but prone to flutters of anxiety. Being on time for Pamela meant being five minutes early – and on one occasion, when I was slightly delayed on my weekly walk over to her, she had a minor meltdown and debated calling the guards… as the only *possible* reason for my 10-minute-lateness was that I must have been kidnapped, Taken-style, off the mean streets of Sandycove. 

Pamela showed her love and care through the little things – the jars of homemade lemon curd and bags of meringues she’d thrust upon all who visited her. I recall Granny’s palm pressed to my head as she checked for a fever during one of my overnight stays with her as a child, and the little bed she constructed out of pillows next to hers, so that she could keep an eye on me throughout the night. I remember the afternoons she’d pick me up from school in her tiny red car and on the front seat there was always a sweetie or two waiting for me. And the cash she sometimes hid up her sleeve and would slip into my hand on my way out from a visit, and we’d bicker like Mrs O’Doyle as I tried to give it back and she’d *insist* I take it and treat myself to something frivolous. 

She hated how money-driven society had become and was an early eco-warrior, and we’d discuss all sorts of topics together for hours at her pokey kitchen table. She was my confidante and always my number one cheerleader. A Depression-era baby, she was also a bit of a hoarder, which I understood because I am one too (much to my mother’s dismay). No sooner had you given Granny a gift, that she’d have folded the wrapping paper and ribbons back into her handbag, to up-cycle into another batch of homemade cards. 

Despite her Catholic beliefs, she swore like a sailor, and I adored her mischievous sense of humour and acerbic wit. She could take a slagging like a champ and then dish it straight back to you. We once lost her during a visit to Tayto Park and then found her fondly staring into an enclosure. “Look at us,” she wistfully announced as we joined her side, “staring at these meerkats like a bunch of fuckin’ eejits.” 

Although her body and eye-sight was failing her, she never lost her sense of humour. She never gave into despair. I am comforted by the fact that at nearly 96 years of age, Granny was ready to go. I cannot even begin to imagine the frustration she must have felt these last years, not being able to turn those busy hands and that butterfly-mind to all the activities that she'd loved and sustained her. Yet she never complained. Instead, she turned her focus outwards and lived vicariously through our stories and visits. 

My last day with her was my birthday on Monday. As she was slipping peacefully away from us, I got to hold her hand, and kiss her forehead, as she had done so many times when I was a child. I got to tell her how much I loved her. And her sea-coloured eyes opened briefly then, to let me know that she heard me through the fog. 

It was an honour to have Pamela in my life these past three decades, and I’m going to miss my Granny-Bear dearly.