Beyond words

Last Sunday 13th June, I went to sleep with a slight sense of trepidation. Just back from a 3-day long roundtable on centres and peripheries, where I stomped through the debates with my usual charm and tolerance, I had returned reinvigorated, ready to take on the world or, failing that, the local authority that currently employs me.

Not alien to my sense of trepidation was the young man I had met there, who happened to tick most of my boxes. Straight (a welcome plus), intelligent (he had me at “positive differentiation”… or was it “differentiated positivism”?), self-deprecating (“yes, I was a young idiotic right-winger”), and, most importantly eager to hear what I had to say, he seemed to perfectly combine a rigorous train of thought, hard-working ethics, unpretentious expression, and, most importantly a non-judgemental, yet moral, stance on life. All the things that matter.

Certain issues needed of course to be resolved before he actually realised that I was a woman, an available one at that. Firstly, he was in a committed long-distance relationship. Being utterly unable to do anything about that (that’s my moral stance on life) I was resolved to wait it out and, in a few months, reassess the situation. Secondly, he didn’t live here. Something which I could easily solve by moving to wherever he was. Yes, I am that kind of feminist. Then, there was the physical incompatibility, him being lithe and limb and I being, well, the stomping kind. Nothing some long overdue exercise on my behalf and a hipercaloric diet on his behalf wouldn’t remedy.

Resolutions in place, his words echoing in my head, why are you complaining? You want change? Go be change! Do something about it!, I felt shamed into action. Yes I would do something about something in the upcoming weeks! Yes I would embrace change! And I would begin by twisting his arm into meeting me for coffee the next day, as he was about to fly half-way across the world.

Hence my feelings of trepidation on June 13, as I went to sleep.

At 5.20 am I was awoken by my aunt, who was at the farmhouse up North. “You know what I am about to tell you?” Partly because I was asleep, partly because I wanted to delay her saying it, I said no.

“Grandmother died”.

I can’t remember how the rest of the conversation went – only that, in spite of my aunt’s instructions that I get some sleep before I got into a 3.5 hour drive on my own, I could not sleep. To fall asleep then seemed preposterous, almost sacrilegious, disrespectful towards my Grandmother. My father was unreachable so it was up to me to keep trying his phone. So, for some three hours, I walked around the house not knowing very well what to do. It was almost 8am when I was able to tell my father that his mother had died. By then I still hadn’t cried and I didn’t cry on the phone to my father. Actually, I was surprised that I was handling it so well.

Because I hardly ever wear black I went shopping for mourning clothes with a friend, then went to Lisbon to my aunt’s house to get her and my uncle their mourning clothes. The experience was surreal.

I didn’t make it to the farm until the end of the day, having picked up my sister, flying in from Brussels, at the airport. That night and the following day were lived in a complete sense of insulation from the rest of the world. A war could have started we would not have noticed, and more likely would not have cared. My Grandmother’s casket was laid open in the formal living room, the double doors opening into the garden and the camellia. That evening, and the following morning and afternoon, sunrays of different colours, bluish in the morning, golden by the afternoon, filtered by the leaves, made their way to the stone doorway. That evening and the next day, before we left to church, time stood still for us.

I was worried about the open casket. During the drive – an incredibly long, arid, lonesome drive, I prepared myself, wishing it would be closed. Yet there she was,, looking rested and restful, dressed in a silk blouse and scarf, with a white silk coverlet draped over most of her body. Silk blouses were a staple of my Grandmother’s wardrobe. When I was a child, I would sleep in her room when visiting and watch her get dressed in the morning – her palette was mostly black and whites, with some beige and greys strewn about. Except for the odd robin egg blue, flashy colours were not her thing.

My Grandmother was tall, lanky, with an understated elegance that at first surprised the folk when she arrived at the village as newlywed, nearly 65 years ago. A Lisbon debutante, the daughter of an important figure of the regime, she entered a drastically different life when she married a 17-years older countryside lawyer, with local political ambitions and no desire to live anywhere else other than Arouca. Amused, she often recalled when, going to the village during her first months of married life, she overheard an old lady, Ha, they said that the Doctor had married a beautiful lady from Lisbon! Look at her, she’s so skinny... that Doctor is a fool!

Another of my Grandmother’s features that I envied was her hair, which she always wore in a classical, full bun. As a child, I watched her comb her long, thick, white hair, and, forced by mother to wear an ear-length hairdo, with a side-part held by a simple pin, I begged my Grandmother to, at least once, wear a ponytail, or even side plaits.

As people poured into the visitor’s room, to view the body and offer their condolences, I recognised some I knew since I was a child – childhood friends of my father and aunt and uncle, former maids and fieldworkers, the seamstress, who reminded me of how often Grandmother would take me to her workshop for fittings – fittings for my Grandmother of course. My very few handmade clothes were made by Granny. One day, I was to go to the river for a bath with my aunt, but had no bathing suit. In 20 minutes, she made me a pair of white briefs with horizontal blue stripes, and I couldn’t believe that something that was sold in shops could be made by her!

Her sewing machine was one of the few things she inherited from her mother, whom she lost to typhus at the age of 9. She was then taken in by her father, as they were separated in those distant 1920’s. Together, they embarked on a “getting-to-know-each-other” journey through some of the country’s spas. One of the few photographs that my Grandmother recognised until the end was taken at Luso. In it, she wears a black dress and, curiously, a side-parted, ear-length bob, held by a pin. She always remembered that period fondly, reflecting the incredibly close bond she forged with her father, which they kept throughout her life – sometimes at the irritation of her husband, my Grandfather. When in Luso, she was taken aside by ladies who were there on a cure, and asked about who she was, why she was dressed in black, and who was that man with whom she was staying. It did look strange to them, I suppose.

Granny married late – at the age of 27. A true beauty, she did not lack suitors, and her explanations on how she broke up with each of them were, for the most part, quite funny. One, a doctor, asked her to marry him and follow him to the colonies, where they would live like kings, and have servants, and leopard skins and all the exotic wares she could want. Upon sharing the young man’s pretences with her father, she heard And you would be able to just leave your father behind?. That’s all my father had to say. I refused straight away.

Another poor soul had the terrible idea of writing her a letter detailing the decoration process of his new house, the home he was hoping to share with her one day – I am now in the process of finding the right curtains. He may have assumed that my Grandmother kept his letters close to her heart. She may have, but she also read them to her father, who, upon learning of the quest for the perfect curtain, exclaimed That is no man for you, minha filha! And another bit the dust.

One suitor almost got her – were it not for his supposed gambling habit at the Espinho Casino, duly reported and censored by my Granny’s chaperones. As she broke off contact with him, and he moved on to a life of adventures, giving her a book, La peur de vivre.

So it almost comes as a surprise that my Grandfather managed to snatch my Grandmother – when they first met she was 13, and he was 30, and he thought she was a kid. My Grandmother was sparse in her details on my Grandfather’s courtship. All we got was the chestnut tree episode. Some years ago, long after he had died, my Grandmother’s sister called her saying she wanted to tear down some chestnut trees to clear a field. My Grandmother threw a fit, she would not allow one particular chestnut tree to be torn down. After intense prodding on the reasons why – after all, she never had cared much for trees or animals or whatever; if it needed to die, it died – she finally relented. It turns out she and my Grandfather first kissed under that one chestnut tree. The tree got a reprieve.

Her romantic, almost tragic, approach to life reduced her to tears on her wedding day – she felt beyond guilty that she was leaving her father behind. After the reception, as my Grandfather waited to take her on their honeymoon, she and her father fell into each other’s arms sobbing. When a family friend hinted that my Grandfather was waiting, that it was time to go, my Great-grandfather replied This moment is long enough for all of us. And off she went, crying like a Mary Magdalene, to join her, I imagine, bemused husband. For a long time I assumed that theirs was a formal marriage, without much spontaneous affection, more of a partnership. Perhaps because of their age difference, or because people always told me stories about my Grandfather’s temper. Some of his clients were mountain people fighting for property or water rights – every now and then, my Grandmother would be summoned to his office by his shouting: Maria Antónia, come here! Can you tell this idiot how the law works?! And Granny would patiently break down into intelligible pieces what my Grandfather was trying to say. From my great-aunt, always more generous in gossipy details than my own Grandmother, I learned that my Grandfather would throw temper tantrums that Granny heard in silence – and then did whatever she wanted anyway.

One day, my preconceptions fell apart when, visiting the farm to heal my broken heart in privacy (if you cry in the middle of the woods and no one hears you, did you really cry?), I went for lunch with Granny on one of our last solo outings. I told her how much I missed the guy, how sad and alone I felt – and she said something such as you’ll find someone, three months with someone is nothing. She then told me about the night when she dreamt of my Grandfather, a dream so vivid that she actually believed he was lying in bed with her. Still sleeping she reached out her arm to drape it over him, and woke up when her arm fell on the mattress. She told me she cried herself to sleep that night. I cried, and still do, thinking of my then eighty-something years-old Grandmother crying for her long-gone husband.

Her beginnings in Arouca were somewhat difficult – she initially moved into the farm in which Grandfather was born, in which his mother and unmarried sister still lived. Cohabitation was not easy, as the two ladies resented the presence of this new woman, with her city manners and behaviour. Eventually, my Grandfather moved to another farmhouse further down the road – the house in which my father, aunt and uncle grew up, the setting of my childhood games and fantasies, adolescent broodings and longings during endless summers and incredibly cold Christmases. It was in this house that I, and my new, more nuclear family, now relived my memories and the stories of my Grandmother’s life.

In the same manner that she eventually conquered her husband’s family, so did she with the village that at first viewed her with suspicion. As the time to leave the house for the mass and burial approached, more people came in. Standing between my Father and Sister in the receiving line, I shook the hands and two-kissed people whom I never met. People who, when they entered the room, signed themselves and knelt at her coffin, kissed her forehead, caressed her cheek. Who then shared with us stories on how my Grandmother helped them. Many of them shared the same regret – that they would no longer see her driving around in her white Renault 4L. The epic Renault 4L, driven by one octogenarian Grandmother and hundreds of Portuguese lumberjacks!

A whole village stopped by to pay their respects, to thank her for her dedication, to say goodbye to someone who, after becoming a widow, did not return to Lisbon, where her children now lived. She chose to remain in Arouca, her home for another thirty-six years, where she had her routines. Alone, she managed a working farm, with its crops, overseers, day workers, harvests. Her daily routine was a comfort for any child in search of peace and stability.

She would wake up early, and go to the village to run errands – I’d often go with her and on our way back to Cela, the farmhouse, just as we were crossing the river, my Grandmother would say Cela to which I would reply de Arouca! And we would yell Cela de Arouca, Cela de Arouca until we parked in the driveway. I often tried to replicate this game with my parents, but they never seemed to have the same enthusiasm. Every day she bought the newspaper, and filled out the crossword puzzles. When I morphed into a sleepy teenager, she would wake me up with Ai, the crosswords hint for laziness. Ai, tanto ai! Tanto ai! So much Ai.

After lunch, she would go back to the village for coffee with her friends – other widows and spinsters who lived in the area. They all went before her, and one day I noticed she was going alone for coffee after lunch.

Their children and nephews were at the wake – and they were an absolute consolation to my Aunt, my Father and my Uncle, with whom they were comfortable enough to cry as much they wanted.

My Grandmother’s last years, especially since she broke her hip, were a mixture of good times and bad times. She was often frustrated that her movements were more limited, that she could not run the house properly, panicking everyday about lunch, waking up my aunt with the questions of who was coming and what was she supposed to feed them. No matter that my aunt had settled the matter the day before. But we also discovered a freer, more spontaneous person, hilariously bossy and frank, perhaps the side effect of a general anaesthetic used so late in the game. Losing her usual reserve, she moaned about the lack of servants on Christmas day, pointed out the sad state of my cousin’s hairstyle and told me that I was fat, oh so fat. She would also repeatedly tell the stories that most marked her in her life – and, as time went by, I listened with increasing attention, lest this be the last time I would be hearing them. The last few times I saw her, we sang together. The last time, my dancing to Agulha e o Dedal had her laughing out loud. Old Portuguese movies – O Costa do Castelo, Canção de Lisboa - French classics such as La Vie en Rose, J’attendrais, were sung in loop. I put the visitor’s sofa next to her hospital bed and we both napped, holding hands – and I am so grateful that I can remember exactly how it felt.

Looking back, I did question the wisdom of going to that Roundtable. I feel tremendously sad that I was napping when my aunt called me from the hospital on Sunday 13^th June, and I didn’t hear the phone. I could have talked to Granny last time. And I feel particularly silly and wasteful that I was wasting my time thinking about some guy instead of being in Arouca, with her. But I thought that she would hold on until September, her birthday. We all did.

By late afternoon on Tuesday it was time to leave to go to the cemetery. That day, Portugal played against Cote d’Ivoire in the World Cup. We were worried that Portugal would win and my Grandmother’s last goodbye would be marred by a concert of vuvuzelas and assorted honks through the streets. God was on our side, and so Portugal drew. Praise be to God, I suppose.

We, the family, had a private moment as the coffin was closed shut, and then the men – my father, uncles, and cousins – picked up the coffin and went out into the golden light of the late afternoon. The same light I saw when I arrived the day before.

Each forward journey always comes with a return journey attached.

As the coffin went down the granite stairs, through the entrance portal, on the men’s shoulders, the sea of people parting in silence to let it pass, I saw this as my Grandmother’s final exit to her first entrance in this house. So as she disappeared from view, I mentally waved her goodbye, and imagined her first entrance in that house, a newly-married Lisbon girl in her late twenties, climbing those steps for the first time, inspecting her new home, where she would raise her family, at a safe distance from her meddling sister-in-law. I saw her inspecting the old mansion and demanding her husband a real bathroom – not the old outhouse and a tin tub, or whatever system he had going on. I saw her sitting at her sewing machine for endless afternoons, training the staff, explaining the law to the mountain people. I saw her drive to the village, stop at the Fire Station to ensure the firemen had enough milk for fire season, and drop her knitted wares at the children’s shelter. I remembered her staying awake on Friday nights until we arrived safely from Lisbon for the week-end, and waving us good-bye from the road on Sundays when we returned.

And so this was my Grandmother’s exit to her first arrival. Greeted by a few, she was waved goodbye by over one hundred. Born in uncertain times, she is mourned by a family of nine.

Portuguese burials have no eulogy, no acknowledgement of the individual traits, achievements, uniqueness of the person who died. Only some semblance of rejoicing because she is now going to eternal life. I wrote this text in a spirit of eulogy. And I also recalled the anguished testimony of a Holocaust survivor, that any acknowledgement of the existence of her brother, who vanished at the age of 7, would cease once she herself was gone. So I wrote this in the hope that, just as I carry with me the memory of a 7-year old boy whom I never met, you may carry with you a little bit of my Grandmother whom you’ve never met. But who, as all grannies are, was adored and is now missed beyond words.

Maria Antónia de Almeida Soares dos Reis Brandão

6.09.1918 – 14.06.2010