How to Write a Eulogy for Your Grandmother

I am NAME, and NAME was my grandmother.

I did not know the woman who THE EARLY LIFE — the war, the emigration, the factory. I knew the one who THE VERSION YOU GOT.

ONE STORY, usually in her house.

She said THE PHRASE SHE ALWAYS SAID approximately NUMBER times in my life, and I did not understand it until WHEN.

She leaves NAME EVERYONE, including the great-grandchildren.

CLOSING LINE.

I am Aoife, and Bridie was my grandmother.

I never knew the woman who came over on the boat at nineteen with one case. I knew the one with the good chair and the biscuit tin that never, in thirty years, contained biscuits.

It contained buttons. Hundreds of them, from every coat and cardigan the family had ever owned, and she could tell you which was which. When I was seven she let me sort them into colours on the rug, which took an entire afternoon, and at the end she put them all back in together. I was furious. She said the sorting was the point, not the sorted. I have thought about that roughly once a month for twenty years.

She said "you will know soon enough" about four thousand times in my life, and she was right every single time, which was maddening.

She leaves my mother Deirdre and my uncle Sean. She leaves six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, one of whom is two weeks old and has her chin.

You were right, Nan. I knew soon enough.