Proper Grandma

This is a wonderful photo of my dad, who is coming tomorrow with mum for the weekend, and his parents, Jack and Susy. It is 60 years today since Susy died. She was just 55. It was just 3 and a half months before my mum and dad got married.  It is Susy's brothers that I have blipped on Remembrance Sunday , both died in Belgium, and it is granddad's medals I wear with pride each year.

Granddad re married in later years so who I knew as Grandma wasn't really, and my cousins always called her Aunty Mary as they remembered proper Grandma. Obviously my sister and I were born after she'd died so we had Grandma, and proper Grandma Thornton.

It is only since I have got older ( and I am not far off the age she was when she died ) that I have thought about her life. Her mother died when she was 2, in childbirth with her sister Rose Hannah. The baby went off to grandparents to be brought up and Susy remained with her dad and two elder brothers. We aren't sure how he looked after them as he was a quarry man , and there are family stories of her father poaching in St Ives estate so he could feed the kids. The boys went off to fight in the 14-18 war and never came home. She married Jack who had also fought on the Somme but survived and went on to have 3 children, dad having two elder sisters. At some point during the second world war she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the treatment being nothing as sophisticated as it is nowadays, but she fought it off and had  around another decade in remission, but it came back and died May 22 1955, in Damens , of Keighley and Worth Valley Railway fame.  She was born in July  1899. Wonder how different her life would have been if she'd been born July 1999?

I hear people go on about poverty and the NHS , and childcare costs and availability and foodbanks, but I think my proper Grandma would probably think that life is significantly easier  than it was when she was living, and I don't think I could argue.