Today, I Got An Email From My Nan. Did I Mention She Passed On Two Months Ago?

It was awful =/ My Nan's email account every so often gets spammed, and a robot sends out spam messages to every single person in her contacts. She had a filter and everything for it, but obviously she can't renew it, now she's passed on.

Let me just tell you something about my Nan. Her name was Linda, or Lin, as everyone called her. She was awesome. No joke - she was an angel on Earth, seriously. She waswarm, kind, funny ... a little bit mad, but all the girls in my family are. One time, she got drunk, stole a traffic cone, and wore it on her head all the way home, with my Ma doing the same. My Nan was in her fifties at this point. She lived life to the full, even though her childhood had been awful and she had been in a string of abusive relationships.

This affected her - in one of the old albums I inherited, Nan had scribbed out her face in some of them. Her boyfriends would tell her she was ugly, and she couldn't see that it wasn't true. She couldn't see that she had beautiful, thick blonde hair, smooth skin, big blue eyesand a heart of gold. She was beautiful, and remained beautiful, inside and out.

Like I mentioned, her life wasn't easy. When my Ma was two, she was involved in a serious car crash. This was in he early seventies, and so cars didn't have seatbelts in those days. A drunk driver went straight into the car she was a passenger in, and she was jerked forward so violently her head smashed through the windscreen. She was blinded in her left eye, but her only concern at the time were for her two children - my mother and my uncle Marc. They were so little that they were thrown down into the footwell, where there were protected from the glass and metal.

After leaving Granddad when Ma was fourteen, Nan entered a string of abusive relationships. Thanks to her childhood, my Nan had a low self-esteem and she needed to have someone in her life. She couldn't be lonely. Unfortunately, many men took advantage of her kind nature and warm attitude, and they messed with her head and used her. Then, Nan got breast cancer.

I had been born by now - I was around seven, and Nan was a huge part of my life. She didn't tell me it was cancer - I was too young to understand - but she told me that she was poorly and the doctors were going to make her better. She was right - she responded well to treatment, the cancer went into remission, and eventually she was given the all-clear.

Despite all of this, Nan never lost her beautiful spirit. She loved everyone, she was so forgiving, and she would give you her last pound coin if you needed it. She lived for other people, and children simply adored her, and she loved them right back. She would spoil me rotten, even if my Ma told her not to, and she was one of my best friends as well as my grandmother.

Five years ago, Nan met Kevin. He was in his early thirties and so of course Ma was sceptical about the relationship, but Kevin turned out to be the man Nan had always been looking for. He simply adored her, and she loved him right back. They got married, and Kevin showered her with gifts, surprised her by taking her out, helped her around the house, and on top of everying, always told her she was beautiful. Eventually, Nan's shattered confidence healed, and she began to realize that she was beautiful.

Nan's health started failing a few years ago. She was only just sixty, but she was plauged by all sorts of bad health. She started getting arthritis, her hip had to be replaced, and gradually she got sicker and sicker. She soon couldn't get out of bed, and so she was taken to hospital, where tests, so many tests, were run. The doctors weren't sure what was wrong, but they knew it was serious. My Ma dropped everything and went to see her, keeping a vigil at her bedside with Marc, her brother.

Things got worse, but I took into account that Nan had beaten so much - she could beat this too. On September 1st, 2010, Nan passed away.

Dad came home early from work and told me. For a while, I was stunned, and then the tears started and they didn't stop for days. I couldn't stop. Everything reminded me of her, and knowing I would never hug her again, or hear her laugh, or even see her again was so painful. I just couldn't believe - and I still can't believe - that she's gone.

Her funeral was perfect. The whole community turned out to pay their last respects. It was the biggest funeral procession I've ever seen - at least sixty cars followed the hearse to the church. Before we set off, I went to see Nan in the Chapel of Rest. She had an open casket, and as always, she looked so pretty. She had been in so much pain, and now she was free. I held her hand and told her how much I loved her, and how proud I was of the fight she put up and the fact I could call myself her granddaughter. I promised that we would all look after each other and she didn't have to worry, and as I said, "Goodbye, Nan," I cried harder than I ever had done in my life. But a part of me knew - and still does know - that she's happy now, wherever she is. She was a wonderful person and surely a gaurdian angel.

I could write a book on how much I loved my Nan, and how much I still love her and always will love her. Today, seeing that email, brought it all back. It was just spam, of course. But seeing her email there, unopened, in my inbox made me realize how it would never be her again. I replied. I told the spammers to stop it. I know they won't stop, they'll probably not even get my message, but it made me feel slightly better.

I miss her so much. I really, truly love you, Nan.
xx Fionnuala xx