For sale: the home we grew up in

Grief resurfaces after an unexpected email

Photo by Kyle Head on Unsplash

At my nan’s funeral, the vicar kept calling her Wendy. ‘We’re here to celebrate the life of Wendy,’ she said.

‘It’s Elsie,’ my sister said.

‘Wendy was a wonderful woman,’ the vicar continued. ‘It’s great to see so many people here for Wendy.’

‘Elsie,’ a few of the mourners at the back murmured. ‘Elsie.’

But the vicar was oblivious, focused on nothing but reading from the sheet in front of her.

I sat completely still, wondering if we were hearing right. Perhaps she was saying ‘when did’ and not ‘Wendy’. Then she did it again.

‘Wendy….’

My nan would definitely have had something to say about it. I imagined her shaking her head and rolling her eyes. ‘Fancy getting my name wrong!’ she’d say. I half expected her to bang on her coffin to tell the vicar what for.

As we gathered at the front of the chapel to say our goodbyes, I heard my nan’s voice in my head. ‘Elizabeth, please make sure she gets my name right for this.’

‘It’s Elsie,’ I whispered discreetly to the vicar.

She nodded, put her hand on my hand, and tilted her head to one side, a look of pity on her face, as though I was the one confused about who we were cremating. ‘Yes, Elsie,’ she said, then turned to the congregation. ‘We can now say our final goodbye to Elsie.’

I caught my mum’s eye across the coffin and smiled. Now we could all rest.

‘Who the hell is Wendy?’ My sister asked as we climbed into the back of the car after the service.

‘She must be next,’ I said, and the pair of us set off laughing.

Mum sighed. ‘I can’t believe she got her name wrong.’

‘Wendy,’ my sister and I said, erupting into more laughter.

Mum gave us a disapproving stare. ‘Pull yourselves together.’

I took a deep breath, trying to stifle my emotions. I couldn’t and only laughed harder. My sister was the same.

My shoulders were shaking. Tears streamed down my sister’s face. 

‘It’s a funeral,’ Mum said. ‘It’s inappropriate.’

We knew that, but we couldn’t stop.

I recognise now that it was a response to grief, my body’s way of releasing the shock, stress and sadness of my nan’s death. Had I not laughed, I probably would have broken down and sobbed.

The grief was overwhelming, and I had no control over it, which is how it felt in those early days after losing my grandparents.  

Nan died in October 2015, just 10 months after my granddad. They were the centre of our family and we all struggled to come to terms with their loss.

I remember feeling overcome by the sadness, unable to comprehend how we’d cope. I looked at people who had lost loved ones and wondered how they’d carried on.

‘How do people get over it?’ I asked my husband who lost his mum when he was 12, followed a few years later by his brother.

‘I don’t think you do,’ he said. ‘You just learn to live with it.’

Almost a decade since my grandparents died, and we have all learned to live without them. At first, it was unbearable, but slowly, as time passed, it got easier. We talk about them, remember the good times, and laugh and smile at the memories. There is still the sadness that they’ve gone, but that grief of the early days is no longer so overwhelming.

I thought we were all doing okay. But on Monday, what would have been Nan’s 95th birthday, I was getting ready for bed when an email came through.

It was from Rightmove, an alert I set up when we were house hunting but still haven’t cancelled. Usually I ignore them, but for some reason, I clicked on this one.

Two-bedroom bungalow for sale.

There was no mistaking the home in the picture. A red bricked bungalow with a door in the middle and two bay windows on either side where Nan always stood to wave us off. The garden was different, with pebbles and plants where there had been grass and rose bushes, but it was their home.

I paused, unsure whether to click on the other 49 photos included in the listing. Mum told me years ago that the new owners had undertaken a big renovation, so curiosity got the better of me.

As I looked through each photo, I found myself searching for something, anything, that would remind me it had been part of our lives. It was as though I expected to see Granddad’s walking stick propped up in the corner, or Nan’s baking bowl on the worktop.

I only made it to photograph three before feeling disorientated and wobbly. There was nothing. Even the layout had changed; walls and rooms had disappeared, and everything was open plan.

The bungalow was at the heart of our family. It’s where mum and my aunties grew up, where my sister and I spent a lot of time as children. It was always filled with people—aunties, uncles, cousins, great aunts, neighbours, friends.

It was the scene of Christmas dinners, birthdays and celebrations, the place generations of my family had called home. And it was always warm and smelled of home baking.

Strangely, the bungalow had been on my mind recently. I’d thought about walking past but decided against it. In my mind, it’s exactly as it was, and I didn’t want that memory to fade. 

Worried that the Rightmove photos would also overwrite my memories, I stopped looking and closed the email. My hands were shaking.

That night, as I drifted off to sleep, I revisited the bungalow in my mind, walking through the gate and down the drive, looking at the garage Granddad built, but which he deemed out of bounds to everyone except him—with its sagging roof and dodgy door he worried a sudden gust of wind might bring it crashing down.

I stepped over the half-moon step where Nan would stand and stir her cake mixture (to get some air into it). Then into the conservatory, through to the kitchen, dining room, down the hall, bathroom to the left, bedrooms on the right, and at the front, what they always called ‘the room’.

There were photographs of family on every wall, mainly of grandchildren at different stages of growing up—school photos, graduations, weddings, baseball games (sent by my American cousins). On the cabinet in the corner was a picture of Nan and Granddad, sitting together on the sofa with the word Home written above.

Family and home meant everything to them.

The next day, I felt empty, my heart heavy with the sense of loss.

Having seen the listing, Mum phoned.

‘It’s really upset me,’ she said. ‘It’s pushed me back to when they died. It was the bungalow I missed as well as them.’

‘It’s sad,’ I said, feeling the same. ‘I couldn’t recognise anything.’

‘Their chairs are still there – in what was the dining room and is now the family room.’

I didn’t want to look; I didn’t need to. I could perfectly picture the two ercol chairs with their tan cushions and imagined my grandparents sitting down with a cup of tea to watch the news or a documentary, and Nan complaining that she’d rather watch something a bit more entertaining.

I wondered what they’d think about the renovations. ‘They’ve done a good job,’ Granddad would no doubt have said. ‘Transformed the place.’

Nan wouldn’t like it. ‘They’ve ruined it,’ she’d say. ‘It was fine as it was. And they must have spent a fortune. What a waste!’

For the next week, I think of my grandparents a lot. I go about my daily routine, but my sadness bubbles under the surface, like it might erupt at any moment. Since losing them, the grief has come in waves, and I realise now that it will do this for the rest of my life.

I miss them. Life has moved on, but it would be nice to go back and have one more Christmas at number three. I open the Rightmove email to take a last look.

From the outside, it looks just like it always did—the house we’d grown up in, now with a new family, and soon to have another. I’m pleased its story is continuing, albeit sad it’s without us. I take comfort in the memories. In the 56 years it was home to my family, there were happy times, a few tears and fall outs, but mostly there was laughter. There was always a lot of that.