Last week saw the funeral of my Grandmother, Meryl Josephine Olive. A fashion designer, artist, mother and very keen gardener, she was an inspiration to me in so many ways.
As is often the way, I learned so much about her in the weeks after her death. She was 101 years old and the last 5 years of her life were not particularly happy. She was largely unaware of the world, which was so unlike Granny, she was always so fascinated by the world and whilst she may not have liked the changes she saw she always took an interest. Those last few years had made the vibrant, active woman recede in my mind, superseded by the everyday mundane care of a largely unresponsive shadow of someone I loved so much, and the strain on my Mum. Now there is a sense of release to celebrate her life and her art, and it was so lovely to share that with the family and particularly my daughter, who only really knew her as a very old lady.
It was lovely to see old photos, she was so beautiful...
and very talented, she was a fashion designer, maker and illustrator who studied at the Royal College before WWII...
...and even sometimes modeled her own creations.
But what I remember most, and in part what kindled my desire to explore art and garden design was her love of drawing plants and flowers and her enthusiasm for gardening. Here she is in full gardening kit, clearing and tidying in early spring in her Oxfordshire garden in the 1980s.
I wish I'd shown more interest then, when she still had her beautiful garden and I wish she knew about our Daisy venture. She would have been full of interest, advice and enthusiasm, with a wealth of experience to share. Her house was always full of little posies of flowers, and her sketches, etchings and drawings, of which she herself was so critical - she never thought anything of her own work.
So as a remembrance I bought home one of her drawings. It's beautiful, of one of my favourite flowers - a Hellebore, and I even have the bottle that the Hellebore is in on my bathroom window sill.
And on my dining table is a selection of the flowers that were on her coffin - beautiful, fresh and fragrant spring flowers...
...that include some parrot tulips that she would have loved drawing, particularly as they opened wide and flopped about.
Safe journey Granny, you will be much missed but your memory is always present through your drawings and ceramics, and the lovely stories and memories we shared at the weekend. I have so much to be grateful to you for, the summers when I was little and Mum was working, the constant encouragement in everything I did, and your embracing of all those strange phases I went through.
Thank you for being fascinated by punks on the tube (that terrified me), and watching Top of the Pops with me (and seeing the fashion forward-ness in New Romanticism).
And I have inherited your lovely, helpless laughing until you cried, and passed it on to my son!
