on sunday, my ma, sister, jason and i began the hard and painful task of sorting through, and clearing my grandma’s cottage. she’d lived there for almost fifteen years and, as a child of the ‘make do and mend’ generation, you can imagine the size of the task we face! there were baskets of tupperware hanging on the back of doors, jewellery boxes that she rescued from a cull i made when i was about fourteen, and what looked like every jumper my mum ever wore whilst she was pregnant with me. 

we’re sending the vast majority of these loved and well-cared for items off to charity where we hope they’ll be snapped up and loved by someone else, but there were a few treasures that we just couldn’t let go of. i’ve been on the hunt for a pair of loafers just like these for so long, and haven’t found a pair even half as beautiful as this. and although they’re dated and not fashionable in the slightest, i thought these little etched glasses (one for each of me and my cousins) were totally and utterly charming :) 

being back at the little cottage that holds so many treasured family memories was inexpressibly difficult. it’s been six months since my grandma died, and i’d started to come to terms with the fact that she lives on only in our hearts and memories. but visiting her home and seeing the cereal boxes she’d cut up to use as notecards, her endless stash of incense sticks, and the little cream and navy coat so iconically ‘grandma’ it’s hard to believe she won’t appear inside it any second made her physical absense seem screamingly, unbearably real again. 

so we’ll wear her shoes, scent our homes with her incense sticks, drink from her glasses and hang her beautiful coat safely in a wardrobe- and hope that these treasures bring the much loved and greatly missed physical presence of my wonderful grandma close again.