At 1:20 this morning, my Damma blew away in a gust of wind.  She was 98 years, and one week old.  It's funny how the weeks begin to count again, at the end of a long life.

She was an indomitable woman, my Damma.  That usually means large, but she wasn't especially large - solid, but not big.  She's always been there, obviously.  My mother's mother.  My mother's father died when Mum was just a teenager, so it was always just Damma.  When I was a small child, she lived in a bungalow on a farm in Glen Lerags, just outside Oban.  We used to stay there a lot when I was very small, and once a year or so after we moved to Germany.  Her cottage wasn't part of the farm, but we were welcomed into the farm family.  Turn right out of the front door, and you were 6 steps from the farmyard - a cattle milking shed, some barns where sickly sheep were kept indoors for nursing, a stable for the bull, free ranging chickens and two or three working dogs.  The farm was run by Duncan and Tom, two brothers, while the house was managed by their sister, Annie.  You went into the farmhouse kitchen, and through the back of that into the living area.  I remember a big oven, and nice smells.  Annie was a large lady, and very generous.  Tolerant of small children.

Turn left out of Damma's front door, and down a gravelly track.  The pathway passes over a shallow burn.   The plish plosh.  Mum used to take me there when I was very small, to splash in the water. Plish!  Plosh!

Damma was a fierce kind of a granny.  She acquired her name - by popular family legend - through a childish perversion of the word "Damn!" which was the only swear word I recall her using (except, perhaps, bugger).  What she lacked in variety, she made up for in frequency and so the story goes that my eldest cousin named her Damma.  It seems equally likely that the same small person simply couldn't pronounce 'Grandma' very well.  But whatever, Damma she was, and Damma she remained.  She had rules.  And she made porridge for breakfast, with a proper porridge stick.  Lumpy porridge.  Lumpy, salty porridge.  Just as porridge should be.  She was a believer in children not being underfoot, so we were turned out of the house and left to our own devices as soon as we were old enough to be reliable.  She had a cairn terrier - Darkie - who was given free range over the farmland and highlands, and who frequently disappeared down rabbit holes.  We ran loose with Darkie.  We slept in a caravan in the garden, when we were a bit older, and when the weather was too wet for outdoors, we stayed in and played Chinese Chequers, or Solitaire, on a board with marbles.

Duncan and Tom used to take us out in the tractor.  I can remember sitting on one of their laps, my hands working the steering wheel, his feet working the pedals, a sheepdog running alongside.  The sheep needed checking, and we were eager helpers.  Duncan, Tom and Annie had broad Highlands accents and it took a while to tune into them, but I can still remember the amused disbelief of "Is thaaaart soooo, Airmilie?" when my sister was spinning yarns.  Annie, in my memory, baked scones.  But so did Damma.

Damma is where I get my artistic side - such as it is.  She was a fervent painter, embroiderer, stitcher, knitter.  She was an enormously creative producer.  She was a devoted member of the Scottish WI and contributed jams, cakes, preserves and pickles in abundance.  She stitched beautiful, beautiful pieces - tapestries, embroideries, collages - all 'signed' with her mark - a snail.  All her daughters are also creative, and she enjoyed their work immensely.  When she didn't like something we produced, she'd sniff and pronounce, "Oh what fun, darling!" - it's become something of a catchphrase with Mum and I.

As she got a (little) older, she moved to Lincolnshire, to be closer to two of her four daughters.  She lived in a bungalow, in a small village, and was the first woman I knew to have a dedicated sewing/craft room.  I have benefited hugely from access to her yarn and fabric drawers, and Daisy still has bags full of Damma's yarns.  Darkie was succeeded by a series of Yorkshire terriers, until eventually the last one died, and she decided she didn't want to be outlived by a dog, and didn't replace her.

She was a well meaning, but opinionated woman with a habit of writing 'helpful' letters which had a way of stirring up trouble and resentment.  Typically of a woman born into a privileged life before the first world war, she was a terrible snob, and could be very judgemental.  It was easy to be cross with her, and for a long time in my twenties, I was very cross with her.  But she was a very strong woman, and understood about the myriad of ways that life can be complicated for women.  When my marriage was in trouble and afterwards, she was my staunch supporter.

She became increasingly arthritic and (inevitably) older.  But she remained feisty.  Actually, feisty was a good word for Damma.  At one point, I recall, the flat roof on her garage sprung a leak.  It was about 20 years old, and owed her nothing, and the lad who came to give her a quote was hopeful of replacing it.  He quoted her £90 to patch it, or £several hundred for a replacement which would "last you another 20 years".  She said "I'm 86.  I'll take the patch." 

A hip replacement kept her going for a while, but her sight deteriorated, and then her hearing.  After several falls, Mum organised for a carer to come morning and evening, to help her wash and dress, and get ready for bed at the other end of the day.  Damma was ungrateful and unwelcoming - she had always been a fiercely independent woman - and feisty, remember - and never one to accept help from strangers.  So she was frequently rude and high handed with the carers, and it took several attempts to find someone who could tolerate her, and whom she would tolerate in return.  I don't imagine they were ever friends, but at least someone could keep an eye on her.  That arrangement lasted for a couple of years, until it became increasingly untenable for her to remain in her bungalow.  She was confused and unreliable on her feet, prone to falling, and it was decided to move her to a residential home. 

She never really took to the home.  At least, she did take to it - she made friends and was exceptionally fond of the carers there who were, in turn, cheerful and kind with her even in her more difficult moods.  But as she became increasingly senile she alternated between paranoia and total oblivion.  She would ring Mum at all hours of the day and night, unable to sleep or to find her teeth.  She developed a naughty streak worthy of Minnie the Minx.  When her hearing deteriorated sharply, Mum took her hearing aid battery out, to replace it, and discovered it was rusty... on investigation, she discovered that Damma had been putting her eye drops in it.  One of the last times I visited her there, we were sitting drinking tea in one of the lounges, and a carer breezed past, "Hello, Sylvia!" chirruped the care assistant.  "Hello, darling!" smiled Damma, charmingly.  "Who was that?"  I asked.  "Oh, I don't know" she shrugged, "I can't remember their names.  I just smile and call them all darling.  It seems to do!"  Or Mum would ask her where she'd put this or that thing of the moment.  "I can't remember, darling" Damma would say, winking broadly at me...  But her memory was deteriorating.  Mum rang her one morning:

"Hello, darling!  How lovely to hear from you!  How are you?"  Damma greeted her, like the prodigal, despite the fact that Mum rang every day and visited most days
"I'm fine, Mum.  I'm ringing to see if you want me to bring you anything when I come and see you today?"
"Well, you can't come today, darling!  I'm in Cape Town!"
"No, Mum, you're in your bedroom in the home.  That's where I'm ringing you."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, darling! I know perfectly well where I am!  I'm in Cape Town!"
Mum gave up.  "Well, that's lucky, Mummy, because I'm in Cape Town, too.  Now, do you want me to bring you anything when I come and see you today?"

Her hip replacement deteriorated over time, as they do.  She kept dislocating it, and was deemed too old to have a replacement hip replacement - she wasn't expected to survive a full anaesthetic.  So they would give her enough of a sniff to put her under for long enough to pop the hip back in.  But eventually, it began to spring out while she was asleep in bed, and six weeks ago they took her in to fuse it.  Had she come out of hospital, she would never have walked again, and so wouldn't have been able to return to her lovely care home - we'd have had to find her a nursing home. 

But she never came out of hospital.  She didn't eat again, properly, after the operation, and took very little water.  She never got out of bed - she who had always been active, bustling.  She began to really deteriorate early last week, and on Sunday her daughters were summonsed back to the hospital in a hurry.  I joined them there, having missed the opportunity to say my goodbyes during the week.  The hospital had stopped treating her, and her IV line had missed the vein, so they had withdrawn fluids, too, and were simply keeping her comfortable.  There was little left of her - scrawny little dot propped up on pillows, and she couldn't speak.  But she was conscious and seemed to know we were there.  I went home to Mum's at about 10pm, leaving my aunts with her, and they stayed until she fell asleep at 1am.  

She didn't regain conscious, and spent the next few days fading into nothing.  Mum and her sisters sat with her most of the time, talking quietly and keeping her company, watching her fight quietly on.  Feisty to the end.  And this morning, in a high wind, she blew quietly away. 

It will take a long time to get used to her not being there.

Damma.  29 April 1911 - 6 May 2009. 

What fun, darling!

Comments

[Grak]

All my condolences to you and yours. She sounds like a marvelous woman, and I hope your memories of her help you in your loss.

[Sandy]

So sorry sweetheart! Love to your Mum

S & S
xx

[Cheerful One]

Sorry to hear this sad news x

[Jeanette]

Lovely to read more about your Damma Vicki, thinking of you and your family.