Grandma

My Grandma was very tall and big boned, as we say in Yorkshire. When my sister and I were little she was «Big Nana» who was married to «little Granddad» (You notice how she is sat down and him stood up, he always wore heels too.)

Zena was not the easiest person to get along with but she didn't have the easiest of lives either. Born in the USSR (the part now know as the Ukraine near Odessa) in to a very poor family, there was no work so she left (given no choice) with the Germans in 1935 to work in the factories and send her money home. She was of course never paid and became a prisoner of war. She was given potato peeling to eat. Very hungry, a few of them went scrumping for apples but they were unfortunately not ripe and gave her a terrible stomach ache, she was sent to the camp doctor. My Granddad. (How he got there is another story.)

They managed to say alive moving from camp to camp, in 1945 my Dad was born in the camp in Hanover. This next bit of her story is vague and confused. A life-time of lies means that the truth is sometimes hard to find. At the end of the war as refuges they tried to find work. A coal miner in South Yorkshire was the best paid job that my Granddad could find.

Zena was illiterate, she had never been to school. She suddenly found herself in a foreign country unable to communicate. As her family grew and the children went to school she began to learn English but she kept her accent for her whole life.

Her death is sad for us but perhaps not for her. She has been a widow for 13 years, has been suffering with dementia for the past 5 years and had just diagnosed with leukemia. In the end she chose to leave.