Memories of Grandma

I got a not entirely unexpected phone call over the weekend from my aunt in Hungary.
My grandma, Rebeka, passed away last Wednesday, peacefully in her sleep. She was aged 93.

The funeral is tomorrow, so unfortunately, there was no way that I'd be able to make it, but I spent some time over the weekend recollecting my happy memories of her. I was also thankful that my fiancée and I had at least been able to see her last month before she left us and had effectively received her blessing.

Though not my grandmother by blood, because she couldn't have any children, she adopted my mum and two others when she was young (I'm not sure of the exact age) and raised them like her own.

I'd been lucky to probably have spent the most time talking with my grandma since my mother's death in 2002.

I visited for a week in 2003 and stayed with her for most of that and then again in 2005 by which time she was in a care home. During that time, my Hungarian improved (it always starts of rather rusty due to no practice in the UK) and she'd sit down and tell me about my mum.

She told me how in 1956 when the Russian tanks poured back into Budapest and quashed the revolution, my mum met with her two best friends Julianna and Veronika and talked about leaving the country. My mum was 20 then and my grandma told me how she was a bit of a tomboy.

Well, the three of them headed off but when they got to the border with Austria and saw the guards patrolling with their guns and barbed wire my mum's two friends relented and came back.

My grandmother explained how my mum had then swum across a river at night to avoid the guards and had left the country. They didn't hear from her after this so assumed that she was dead.

Then a year later, a letter arrived telling them that she was alive and well in England working as an au pair having stayed in Austria and then France along the way!

She told me how pleased they'd all been to hear that my mum was alright and how happy they were when, a few years later, she was allowed to come back and visit and then even later got married and then when I was just a wee baby came back to show me off too.

I always remember my grandma smothering me with kisses. Way too many kisses in fact but that just showed how loving she was. She visited us in London twice, the first time with my grandfather. I remember her telling him off one day for telling daft stories and everyone just laughing their heads off at their silly argument, her face initially cross and then breaking down into laughter with us.

A friend of my mum, whom I still see, recalls during my grandma's second visit, how they ended up sitting in the garden together one day and even though my grandma spoke to her in Hungarian and my mum's friend back in English, they seemed to yap on for ages and got on like a house on fire.

Apparently the baffled look on my mum's face when she came out and saw the pair of them getting on so well despite the language barrier was a sight to see.

Rest in peace gran. You'll be missed but never forgotten.