Gloria Elaine Horbow (nee Valley), 1921 - 2006

In the very early hours this morning, my Nanny left the world. She died, finally, of renal failure, after years beset with incurable and vicious conditions ranging from macular degeneration, to osteoarthritis, to skin cancer. Her last number of years were spent very slowly dying in the way everyone hopes they won't - in great and near-constant pain.

Gloria Elaine Valley was born in Port Arthur, Ontario on August 29th, 1921, the second of two children to Irene and Ernest Valley. Nanny's mother had a delicate heart condition, and throughout my grandmother's youth her mother was away from home, in and out of hospital. Ernest worked at Port Arthur Beverage, and Nanny drank pop while growing instead of milk because her father could bring it home from the plant for free. Unsurprisingly Nanny's teeth rotted out of her head and she had dentures by the time she was 25. My great-grandfather was a talented fiddler and had his own old-time fiddle radio show, but he was also a drunk. I don't think Nanny's childhood was very happy.

My grandparents went to the same high school and knew of each other, but it wasn't until after they'd graduated that they met and began to "go around" together. During WWII my grandfather worked at Canada Car, the aeronautics plant which developed the Hawker Hurricane, and as such was not allowed to enlist in the military to serve in Europe. My grandmother was one of the only women she knew who had a husband at home during the war. Nanny's first pregnancy in 1944 resulted in a child that died soon after it was born; it was later decided that the doctor had misdiagnosed her conception date and had induced the labour three months early. Nanny carried the grief of the loss of that first child her whole life.

My mother was born in 1945 and five years later my uncle Jim arrived. Around that time my grandparents relocated to a house at 206 South Hill Street which was to be their home for 40 years. I grew up going to visit them on Hill Street, picking raspberries in the backyard and exploring the drawers and cupboards of that house. In 1990 my grandparents moved to Calgary, and when my parents divorced and my mother moved to Nakusp, they sold their Calgary house and moved to Penticton, BC. They moved again, to Nakusp, in 1999, where they remained in a converted mobile home cottage on my mother's property for more than five years. This last spring Nanny and Grampa moved to a care facility in Nelson BC, and that is where Nanny died earlier today.

Nanny was a wonderful grandmother to me. She was impatient and scared you'd break her things, but she'd also tell long and funny stories. Although she came from a quietly poor home, my grandmother had a very clear sense of ettiquette and protocol, and she helped train my sister and I into the lifelong (and sometimes lapsed, I'll admit) habit of writing thank-you cards. Forever will the smell of Shalimar perfume and Ponds cold cream remind me of Nanny, who was a great fan of both. She'd call me regularly when I was away at university, and it was always, "Ashley! It's Nanny!" as her excited greeting, like it was the first time in forever.

A performer at heart, a few years ago Nanny memorized "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and would perform it with relish at holidays. Nanny was also a closet creative writer and one of her best tales was entitled "Intrepid Al", the true story of Nanny and Grampa attempting to remove a wasp's nest from a backyard crabapple tree, wherein predictable disaster ensues. Nanny knew all manner of crazy old poems from early grade school, stuff I've never heard before or again. She also loved to sing, and though she had a weak, thin singing voice, she'd warble through the oldies. One time she called me late at night and wanted to sing "You Light Up My Life" and Turner and I danced together to her rendition in our dark livingroom, the phone held up to share. Another time a few years ago Nanny called me to talk about Avril Lavigne's early hit "I'm With You". "I like that new Jewish girl from New York," she told me. "I think her name is April." She sang a bit of it: It's a damn cold night / Tryin' to figure out this life... I said, "Avril Lavigne?" "Yes! That's her. She's lovely."

One of my favourite memories of Nanny was the time she had an enormous and troublesome blackhead deep in her ear! I was called in to see what I could do and the "operation" was performed on the floor of her Calgary bedroom, in the sunshine coming through a big floor-to-ceiling window. Nanny and I were both in hysterics, rolling around on the floor laughing as I tried to get the right angle with a pin and bobby pin and kleenex, stay out of the light, and fix the blackhead all at the same time. She made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone but family about this story until she was dead. When it finally came out that blackhead was the biggest I'd ever seen and Nanny and I talked about it for years afterward.

Nanny was the kind of woman who knew what eating was all about. Although in her later years blindness prevented her from cooking, she certainly enjoyed food enormously all her life. If you were ever stuck for a Christmas gift for Nanny, a box of Turtles was the standard (and highly appreciated) default solution. Nanny had a kind of child-like joy when she was eating something especially tasty, and she'd exaggeratedly exclaim, "Num! Num! Num!" and smack her lips, laughing at her own cornball joke. Or when a meal was particularly satisfying she'd announce to the room, Shma schneh! a bastardization of the Ukrainian for "How delicious". In Nanny's opinion one of the finest advances in modern life was the introduction of those roasted chickens in the deli department of grocery stores everywhere. We had many, many, many conversations over the last few years about those chickens - how good they were, how many different meals they could be used for, and particularly about how the thigh parts were our shared favourite.

Nanny loved to talk about sex. (My grandfather completely disapproved of discussing such matters and would leave the room.) She loved ribald sexual jokes and thoroughly enjoyed a good long tale of romantic intrigue. As a teenager and woman in my 20s I was one of the only people I knew who shared the details of my dating life with my elderly grandmother, and this aspect of our relationship helped reinforce the valuable lesson that just because people aren't young doesn't mean they are prudish (though this sometimes follows), and that sexuality can be a healthy interest throughout your life.

Turner wanted me to mention his favourite moment with Nanny. It came soon after he'd arrived in Calgary back in 2003. She called and said, "Put him on the phone":

Nanny:      Well Chris? What are your intentions? When are you going to settle down?
Turner:      I just got out here a few days ago. We're just figuring things out. Can you give me some time?
Nanny:      ...I'll give you one month. I want to hear that you're engaged and you've got one month or you answer to me.
Turner:      I'll do my best, Nanny

Nanny loved to tell people about the ultimatum she'd issued to Turner and how, as a result, she was the catalyst for our marriage.

Everyone has favourite stories about how their grandparents came through for them at moments when no one else could. Nanny and Grampa stepped up to help me often, and were incredibly and repeatedly very generous in time, money, energy, and investment my entire life. I'll just tell one story about this, because I was just reminiscing about it a few days ago: when I was first working in radio, it was in Edmonton. A seriously poisonous environment, I've never worked within such a vicious social scene. After about two weeks I had managed to inexplicably piss off the woman who controlled the signing-out of equipment, including sound recorders and microphones. She started refusing to let me have any of the equipment, even when I had an assigned story to cover, and even when there were very obviously three or four recorders sitting right there on the desk. She'd look at me, and say that none were available, and then give me one of those, "what are you going to do about it?" looks.

I was new, allowed to be in the station on spec and on probation, conditional on me making myself indispensible 12 hours a day. Not being able to sign out equipment was going to get me booted very quickly. I'm pretty sure I called my mother, crying, from a bathroom stall. She told Nanny what was happening and about two hours later I received an email from my mother: Special occasion, your birthday and Christmas have come 10 months early. Nanny and Grampa want to buy you a mini DV recorder, headphones, and a microphone. Buy them today: go now. Scratch your name into them with a sewing needle so no one can argue about who owns the equipment. Keep your pecker up. Love Mom. I did as I was told. Later that day the bitch who controlled the equipment came by my desk and tried to take away the sound recorder. "I TOLD YOU that these were ALL SIGNED OUT," she said. I quietly snatched it out of her hand and turned it over to show the label: Ashley Bristowe. None of us ever want to land in those situations, but when you can't avoid the shark tank lord knows it's gratifying to have a protective cage. THANK YOU, NANNY, for giving me that moment of triumph, as petty as it had to be.

Nanny loved, and I mean LOVED to be the one "in" on a secret with you. Whenever I was planning a surprise for anyone, even for people Nanny didn't know (housemates, classmates - whoever), I'd always call Nanny ahead of time to explain my whole scheme. She'd telephone for daily updates, as excited and sometimes more excited than I was about the unfolding plan. It was even better when she was going to be witness to the surprise, and had the opportunity to keep a secret from someone in the room. She'd sit there, squirming and nervous and giggling, perpetually on edge of breaking down and blowing the whole thing. And when you finally yelled, "SURPRISE!" the next voice you heard was Nanny's: "I KNEW! I knew all along! Oh, it was terrible to have to keep the secret! The waiting! I knew all along and I COULDN'T SAY ANYTHING! Hee hee hee!"

She loved being right in the smack-dab centre of the action. After she went blind, if something was underway in the room and Nanny couldn't tell what was going on, she'd start to screech with increasing volume and tempo, "What is it? What is it? WHAT'S HAPPENING? WHATISITWHATISIT!!!?" When I was pregnant and the due date arrived, Nanny was so nervous that she asked me, very seriously, NOT to call her when I went into labour, because she'd be so worried about me. Then she proceeded to call twice a day, and if we didn't pick up the phone she'd fly into a panic. When we finally went to the hospital to deliver, Nanny somehow tracked down the number to the ward nurses' desk, and called to demand they put me on the telephone immediately.

Nanny had glasses and even continued to wear them once she went blind - she said she felt undressed without them perched on her nose. And although she wasn't bald, Nanny's hair was sparse and wispy and difficult to control, so she'd said "t'hell with it" years and years ago and had opted for a series of handsome and perfectly coiffed wigs. She didn't wear the wig or glasses (or the aforementioned false teeth) while sleeping of course, which lead to an infamous family story told and retold hundreds of times over the years: Borther John, 3 years old, awoke in the night and it was Nanny, visiting us from Thunder Bay, who came to check on him. John was standing in bed, waiting for an adult and apparently looked up at the person who came in - someone with Nanny's voice but certainly not looking very much like Nanny: no hair, no glasses, and a jaw containing no teeth - blinked, and then exclaimed, "Nanny! Where's your HEAD!?"

I was well into my twenties by the time I finally began to understand my grandparents' relationship with each other. For years they were bickery types, snippy and short-tempered and demanding. In my head I can hear my grandfather's warning tone when Nanny was getting to be too much: "Glorrrria?" I know they drove each other crazy, and I'm sure having hyper grandchildren screeching through the house frayed their nerves, but at the time it just seemed like the status quo. Years later, I was visiting them in Penticton, and there happened to be a nighttime thunderstorm. I woke up to go to the bathroom and overheard my grandfather talking in low tones in Nanny's bedroom: she was afraid of the thunder, and he was comforting her over and over. I came to the door to ask if she was okay, and found them sitting side by side, holding hands. I'd never seen them as anything other than my grandparents, both focussed on me. In that moment they were together with each other, and no one else was in the world. When they noticed me standing there, it was obvious that I was gently interrupting. It was a shock to see something so unfamiliar to me happening between these people I'd known my whole life. I think about that moment often. I am so grateful that I witnessed it.

In the end, I found I couldn't call her. I haven't spoken to Nanny for a month, though for the last week I've been carrying her telephone number around with me everywhere. I knew these were her final days, but I just couldn't call. I was heartbroken that my grandmother was in so much pain, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help her. Especially in the last few months, visiting and calling seemed to make things worse for her - Nanny was overwhelmed by anger and self-pity, and would set to lashing out. A woman with a mean streak usually kept under pretty close wraps, Nanny could be pretty awful at times. And it was hard to listen to her vitriolic rantings as the body gave out beneath her and her weeks were clearly numbered. She loved to cause trouble between family members and this tendency accellerated in her final years, leading to a lot of stress and frustration. Also, recently Nanny had begun imagining things, paranoid delusions which included people knocking on her window at night or coming to the hospital to move her belongings around, and it was difficult to bear this part of her decline since she was otherwise mentally lucid and seemingly rational. Whole topics had to be avoided to prevent inevitable uproar and meltdown, and eventually she began to point this out - "You've stopped talking about things with me! I can't just sit here and discuss the weather, you know! Someone is flashing a light in the window and digging under the house at 2am! Why won't anyone do anything!?"

When I was a child, I used to pray at night that I would die before my grandparents. I was sure I didn't want to go through the pain of losing them. But life is long, sometimes too long, I think. I watched my grandmother suffer terribly in the last decade of her life and it was like an elongated grieving, watching her disintegrate by increments. She was blind and lonely and in constant torture from a skin cancer that produced insufferably itchy purple welts all over her body. A few weeks ago I saw on The National a new procedure that cures and reverses macular degeneration, restoring the sight of people who have gone blind from the condition. All I could think was that it was too late for Nanny to benefit. How wonderful it would have been for her to see again before she died. When I was a teenager I'd sometimes dream about their deaths and I'd call them first thing in the morning, sometimes even waking them up. Nanny was always amazingly omniscient and understanding. "It's okay dearheart," she'd tell me. "We're okay. I'm okay. Grampa's okay. We're just fine. Don't you worry about us. We're here."

For the last number of years Nanny was getting ready to die, and we talked about it. I'd say, "I know it's selfish Nanny, but I don't want you to die." And she'd say, "Lookit kid, we're OLD! What are we living for now? We see you every once in a while and that's wonderful, and we love our kids and grandkids and our friends but c'mon! We've had a full life! We travelled, we've seen enough! I'm blind, Grampa's got Parkinson's, we're all bent-over and creaky and cancerous. We're just bumping around in this place getting on each other's nerves. Grampa and I pray at night together and ask God to take us. We're ready!" Cliched but true, in death at least she's no longer in pain - and she was in so much pain.

Still, I still don't know what to think. That she's actually gone seems impossible. I remember the feel of her face, soft moisturized skin with a feathery down of light hair across her cheeks. I can see her hands, with the wrinkles on her fingers, and her fingernails all filed into points (blind, she'd do it by feel). The way she moved, the way she'd say, "Whassat? Are you talking to me?" peering toward you. Her hyuh hyuh hyuh laugh when she was getting an unexpected joke. Her voice like a slapping belt when she was irritated, accusatory. I know that her body is in Nelson, that it's cold and she's not in it anymore. But that they're going to burn her up and all that'll be left is ashes? I can't get that. I can't put it in me, can't stuff it all into my head yet, those ideas.

But I like to think that she can see me now, writing this. I know she'll enjoy seeing us grieve her, proof that we loved her and that we miss her. I like to think about her peering in on me, getting all the up-to-the-minute gossip first hand, finally. I want her to see me hang the chandelier she left to me, the chandelier she used to point at my whole life and say, "Ashley, that chandelier is yours. When I die, it goes to you." I've been polishing the crystals. I have to have it re-wired. It'll go up in the new year.

I like to think of Nanny enjoying watching Sloane growing up, getting older. When we were in the Halifax airport in the summer Sloane saw a wheelchair and went to pat it. "Where's the Nanny?" she asked - Nanny had been in a wheelchair a few weeks earlier when we'd visited in Nelson. I hope Nanny knows that Sloane asks about her, even now. This morning she came in to sit on my lap and I was showing her the blog entry I was writing. "This is my story about Nanny," I told her. "I'm telling a story about Nanny."

"Oh. Where's the Nanny?" she said.
"Nanny died, love. Nanny died this morning."
"Oh. Nanny died," said Sloane.
"That's right, dear. I miss her."
"Where's the Nanny?"
"She died."
"Oh."

I have a lot more to say about Nanny, but I'm going to stop here for now, though I'll likely come back to this posting and add to it.

Today we say goodbye to Nanny. Rest in peace.

Categories: Family

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