Irene

For those of you expecting a Hurricane Irene wrap-up, I’m sorry this isn’t one. Instead I took one of MamaKat’s writing prompts and went with it: “4.) Tell your Grandma’s Story.”

My grandmother’s name was Irene. I never met her but I’m named for her, my middle name is Irene.

Irene, my Grandmother

She died very young.
At 39, she left a husband and 2 daughters behind after she lost her battle with ovarian cancer.

Her daughter, my mother, was only six, the same age my daughter, Anna is now.  She too shares her Grandmother’s name as her middle name: Susan, for the grandmother she will never meet.

I can’t imagine what that was like at that age, but I do know what it was like to become a mother without a mother, because my mother did die young, at 53.  I was 24 and then I became a mother at age 30.

Now I share something with my mother, no Grandmother to pass down the stories, explain the pictures.

It all falls to me.

There aren’t a lot of stories about Irene because she died so young. What little I do know is from a story my mother shared when I had the courage to ask her about her mother.

So this is Irene’s story, what little I know of it.

Irene was the daughter from a Scottish pedigree of missionaries, Ninian and Janey. Their genealogical roots muddy at best but traced back to the Isle of Man and an orphanage in Scotland. Together with her sister, Beatrice, the family made their way to Canada in hopes to rebuild.

At twenty five, she met my grandfather and a passionate love affair bloomed. They were immediately enamored and married; children and a family were the dream.

But children didn’t come.

For many years.

As Murphy’s wonderful law would have it, it wasn’t until finalizing an adoption that they became pregnant with my mother. Together with her sister, my mother was lovingly raised as if she were a twin.

For six short years.

Until their mother got sick.

My Grandmother Irene, Lani and my mother, Susan age 3

And then Irene’s beautiful hair turned silver gray and suddenly she was gone.

Before they even got to know her.

I know this about Irene:

She adored her girls.

She always got dressed up to greet my Grandpa at the door after work.

She believed “your hair is your crowning glory.”

She was funny.

She was tiny waisted until she became ill.

She kept the house very tidy.

and

… She would have been very proud of her daughters, of me and her great-grandchildren.

Ok I made the last one up, but I believe it.

I have to.

When it comes to parenting I am often chasing ghosts for advice, my mother, her mother – what did they do in this situation or that situation? I have now eclipsed the time period when my own mother was mothered.  I don’t know how she felt about growing up without her mother or about how she felt becoming a mother without her own mother around.

And I can’t ask her about it.

I don’t plan on my children having to wonder about this.

You see, I  am here to break the chain…

…to end this legacy of cancer and leaving too soon.

My Grandmother Irene, 6 months before she became terminally ill with ovarian cancer.

- Sara

In other news: we have a winner for the New Balance Lace Up For the Cure shoes!

Congratulations to  

Chris McNicholas!

I will contact you by email to get your shoe size and mailing address!!! 

Tagged as: cancer sucks, irene, memories