Tales From the Frontline: The Crone’s Lesson on Anger, Words and Love

My safe harbour when the storms blew up in my family was my Nana. 

My Mother’s Mom. She was a delightful old Crone. 

She was not a big woman, but she was strong. Her laugh was like a thousand devilish chimes, her eyes sparkled, she had a bawdy humour and she had a little hooked nose and gnarled hard worked hands. She liked her whiskey, her bingo and her little adventures.

She taught me to bake, a pinch, a handful, and yes you will know when your dough is right by how it feels.

She taught me to cook, a pinch, a shake, stir clockwise three times round and fill your cooking with love. 

She had started to teach me gardening, talking to the plants, respecting nature, the value of having your hands in the dirt when your head is in the muck. And always remember to make friends with the Fae. 

She taught me to see an adventure in the every day, ask people questions, stop and really take a look around. Listen to the stories being told, feel the ones that aren’t. 

She taught me that music, dancing, play and humour were not to be saved for a once in the while. Dance when the mood strikes, sing loud and laugh often. 

She tried to teach me to crochet, alas this was hard as I am left handed and she was right. It never really worked.

She taught me to look for the signs that our Gods and Ancestors would provide when asked. She taught me to look into the Cards and listen to what I was being told. She never once doubted me or made me feel like a freak for being able to hear and dream of the dead, or for knowing things I ‘should not’.

She taught me that when you grieve deeply, be grateful, it means you have loved deeply. Be of service and help out with an open heart.

I learned so much from her, so many lessons, some that I have taken thirty years to even begin to understand. I find comfort in talking to her, even now.

She would take me for weekends to come and stay with her. It’s funny I still dream of her house and garden in vivid detail, sometimes even waking, the smell of her and her home still linger.

It was a four bedroom bungalow, situated on a giant lot that had a small garage and amazing garden.

My Papa had died the year I was born, I never got to formally meet him (more on that later), but she talked about him often. He had put much work into their little house. My Nana had wanted a proper dining room, so he had taken two of the upstairs bedrooms and knocked the wall out. There was a big table in there, which i remember having family dinners around. The closet is where she kept her treasures, the war medals of my Papa, her brother, old photo albums, letters…… Sometimes this room would double as her sewing room. 

The living room had a formal stiff couch, the well polished table had a crystal candy dish filled with a clump of licorice allsorts. On Saturday nights we would sit in here in the two armchairs closest to the TV, with our TV trays and eat dinner and play Kingo Bingo.

There was the ‘guest room’, it used to be my Mom’s room that she had shared with her middle sister. There were twin beds, but what I remember most was the curtains in that room. They were white with large green flowers. But at night, with the street light shining through those flowers all had evil little faces and I could never fall sleep in there. I usually preferred sharing my Nan’s bed.

Her room had a dresser and a small table by the window for plants. Her bed was a double that had a frame with storage in the headboard. She kept her books and night creams in there. It had well worn gold coloured comforter, the sheets were soft and the pillows fluffy. The mattress was old, as it was the one she shared with my Papa she he was alive. By all accounts he was a hard drinking bear of a man, but loved his family. 

When I was about five, I recall waking from a dream that had scared me. I dreamt that I had walked into my Nana’s room and there was a large man in the bed, with an oxygen mask on. He looked so ill, he beckoned me towards the bed. That’s when I woke up. When I described the man to my Nana, she told me that it had been my Papa wanting to talk to me.

That was about the time she began to teach me to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ and to not be afraid. My Nan started soon after with teaching me the fine art of tarot. 

She loved to teach me about the magic in everyday. One of the things that we would do with regularity is take a bus adventure. She would get us up early in the morning, I would draw a number out of a hat. We would dress in our ‘Sunday finest’ and find that number bus, we would ride it the full route- pretending we were tourists and taking in the sights of a foreign town. Sometimes we would have accents, sometimes we would share fantastical story or two. We would then make our way back to the mall by her house, have a little lunch and go home and play in the garden or play cards. She would get me to tell her about what I had observed.

When my Mother had extended stays in the hospital my Nana would come to stay with us. She was one of the most important people to me. She kept me safe, she made sure that I had a wondrous parts to my childhood in many ways. She also took great care of her ‘baby’, and I am sure it must have been one of the hardest things to watch your child dying. As time began to run short for my Mother, we were all vying for time with her. My Nan would often give up her one on one so myself or one of my sisters could have time. The Christmas before my Mother died we were told that she had about six months to a year left. She wanted to be home as long as she could. This was punctuated by short stays in the hospital. February of that year we could tell time was going faster. My Nan and I were preparing for my Mom to come home from the hospital. It was unspoken that this was more than likely the last time that she would be coming back. I don’t remember now what had prompted the conversation but I know it ended in an argument between my Nana and my eleven year old self. I wanted time with my Mom, my Nana wanted time with her baby girl. I got angry with her and told her I wanted to be alone with my Mommy. Nana had gotten frustrated with me, I did not want to listen to reason, I did not want to share her time. I don’t really remember what she said, but my come back is burned in my memory. The last thing I said to my Nana was to leave and not come back. 

She had agreed to go shopping that morning to give my Mom and me sometime to just hang out. (This mostly meant me snuggling up with my mom in her bed, mostly while she slept.)

A few hours later I was burrowed in blankets next to my Mom. We were watching TV. Out of the blue my Mom told me to look out of her bedroom window onto the front street. I asked her why and she urgently told me to get off the bed and look NOW.

When I looked outside what my child’s mind let me see was a blanket in the middle of the street. I told this to my Mom. 

She glared at me, and quietly said “It is not a blanket, that is my Mom. Get outside to her now!”

“Mommy, it is just a blanket someone left there.”

“Get your ass outside now.” She had pushed herself to a mostly seated position on the bed, she had grabbed her cane and hit me in the hip to get me moving.

By the the time I had gotten my shoes on, I could hear the ambulance outside. One of the the neighbours had called. I came out to see my beloved Nana on a stretcher with a tube down her throat but no one doing anything else. My neighbour had tried to grab me in a hug so I could not see her. Her nose was bloody from falling. I remember screaming. One of the EMS saying how there was nothing they could do. 

I kept screaming. I could not go back in my house and tell my Mother her Mom was gone. I had done this. I had told her not to come back. I had stolen my Nana’s and Mom’s time together by pitching a fit. I knew telling my Mom that she would go back into the hospital and never come home. I knew she would hate me. I had caused all of this.

I don’t remember going back into the house, but I can still see my Mom, somehow she’d gotten herself out to the kitchen, she was holding her cane and had slumped down in the chair when my neighbour had told her. I kept crying. I had killed her. I had told her to leave and not come back. One of the most precious people in my life. I never said sorry, I never told her how much I loved her. I only told her to go away. 

The next memory I have of that day was my sisters being there, we were waiting for the ambulance to come and take my Mom back to the hospital. I was standing by the stove, holding my cabbage patch kid and almost twisting her head off. I could hardly speak. I could not tell them what I had done. I could not tell them this was all my fault. That my father was right. We were evil. We made bad things happen.

I remember standing by the door as they wheeled my Mother out, the front wheel of the gurney rolled over my foot. I didn’t flinch- it was the least pain I deserved for what I had done. 

For a very long time there was a part of me that believed I really had killed her. 

Now, even all these years later, I have an exceptionally hard time allowing myself to be angry. I get physically ill and have panic attacks when it comes to confrontation. Often I will not express my anger, I will make excuses for the other person, take on the responsibility of the disagreement and be the one to make it right, whether it was my ‘wrong’ or not. I apologize for being angry when it does happen. I am beyond careful in what I say, that if it is a disagreement with someone I care about that I am not mean and never call them names. I don’t ever want vitriol to be the last words I exchange with someone. I will give in to keep the peace.

I loved her so much. She was the spark that lit my faith, my trust in the cards, my trust in the ether.  She is the reason I am curious, I watch the sky, I cook for anyone I can feed and I talk to the birds. She is the influence for my kindness, my openness, my compassion and empathy.

While the extreme anxiety that comes form this trigger makes me appear a doormat, a ‘fixer’, a pleaser, as long as I always do the right thing, you adore me, so we will NEVER argue! It has effectively stolen my voice many some cases.

There is a bonus, when I can balance my right to be expressive in my justified anger, I conscientiously separate a person from an action (while you are not an ass, what you did was an ass move). I have to calculate if my expressing my anger is worth the possible anxiety attack, this means often I don’t give in to reactionary behaviour over small things. These can be very positive things.

I will miss her until we meet on the other side of the veil. I know she knows I love her, and that I honour her. And if I could even now, I would take back those words in a heartbeat.