Melva

Please excuse the quality of the photograph, but I’d like to introduce you to Melva West. She was known as Toots by many, but to me she was Nanna.

Many things I fondly remember. Her kitchen with all kinds of baked deliciousness. Tea and biscuits in cups and saucers. Helping with her sturdy volumes of word puzzles. Tending to the chickens. Staying up late to watch the tennis. Train trips to the city to feed the ducks. Outings to the golf club and observing the well-oiled machine that was the kitchen! Above all, I remember her warmth, generosity and good humour. (Her concern that the neighbours might believe the oversized knickers (laundry she did for another family member) on the clothesline were hers!)

Many lessons were learnt. The importance of a good breakfast. The finer points of poker and the consequences of trying to cheat! She was certainly not afraid to pull my brother and I into line when we were causing her grief. As a child dealing with changing circumstances, my grandparents’ house was a place of calmness and certainty – a shelter from the storm. A feeling that everything was going to be okay.

It’s been twenty years since she passed and this is my eulogy. (I underestimated how emotional writing this post would be.) I never got to tell her how loved she was and how much I appreciated all she did for us. Maybe I was too young to articulate such feelings, or didn’t know how. Over the years I have longed to share a cup of tea and share the dramas of my adult life with her, wondering what she would make of it all!

Dearly loved, warmly remembered and sadly missed. xx