Ageing Doesn’t Happen Gradually

And I’ve got bad news if you think it will be graceful

My grandmother, Doris. I never saw her without a glass of sherry in her hand. From the family photo album.

I was only four when I asked my grandmother why the skin on her hands was all wrinkled and not smooth like mine.

She said it was because she was old and that it would happen to me one day. Do you have an image in your mind of a kind grandmother, gently cradling me in her arms and imparting words of wisdom? Strike that from your mind.

My grandmother had a hard life; her husband was a copper miner who died in his 30s, and she became a single parent when my mother was only seven. I cannot begin to understand what she went through, and I do not blame her for turning into a bitter old bat of a woman whose nourishment, it seemed to me, consisted entirely of sherry. She tried to get me to inhale one of her cigarettes when I was about ten years old. Her breath and body stank, and I avoided her as much as possible. Sorry, Gran. Just saying it like it was. Hoping you are at one with the Universe now and all is peace and light.

I remember, aged four, looking down at my hand and trying to pull the skin to stretch it, but it wouldn’t budge without hurting. I believed her when she said that one day my skin would be slack, mottled and wrinkly like hers, but I still couldn’t quite imagine it ever happening.