I lost my father - but console myself with becoming a grandmother
film mother_tongue womens_life women features
Greg Wilcox Rob White Helen Brown Michael Deacon Matthew Lynn Ben Coles Sarah Standing
Shaken by the death of her father, the film director Bryan Forbes, Sarah Standing explains how her grieving was helped by the birth of her grandson
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The Telegraph
In the bleak months directly after my father died, two years ago, I spent a lot of time acting. I sometimes used to get up in the middle of the night, look at my face in the bathroom mirror and practise smiling. It was as though I were auditioning myself for a part I wasn’t convinced I could ever successfully play.

Grief robbed me of optimism, and made me selfish. Overnight I went from being someone who woke up every morning full of purpose and an innate joie de vivre to a curmudgeonly old bag. “Is this really it?” I began to wonder. “Is this my life?”

I was 53, middle-aged, menopausal, a mother of three children who had all flown the nest and married to a man 25 years older than myself - all I saw was mortality, staring me in the face. Where was my silver lining? I was dammed if I could find it.

I’d always prided myself on my ability to live in the moment. I’d loved life. And I’d particularly loved my life. Despite the fact it was financially precarious I was one of those irritating people that genuinely used to find joy in the smallest pleasures. I was also one of those incredibly fortunate people who had made it to my 50s without losing anyone I loved. WIth the loss of my beloved father, film director Bryan Forbes, who I was unbelievably close to, I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz - only in reverse. My life went from colour to black and white. The Emerald City was just a façade.

It was our first Christmas Day without Dad. A milestone. The family rulebook had been irrevocably torn up and re-written; half a century’s tradition thrown up in the air. The venue had changed: no more driving down to my parents’ house in Surrey, post-stockings for Christmas lunch. Mum was up in London styaying with me, but my sister and her family were in Barbados, my eldest daughter India was abroad with her husband and I was now the self-appointed Minister of Sport and Entertainment.

“This is the new normal,” I kept muttering, Grinch-like to myself as I went through the motions of a different way of celebrating Christmas. I’d perfected my fake smile. It was convincing. I’d done my mum a stocking. I’d refused to admit to anyone, even to myself, that I was sad my daughter and husband weren’t here. We were going to get through Christmas if it killed us.

"Tell her to wait,” I snapped. I needed to wipe grease off my hands and take a second to plaster my fake smile back on.

“Happy Christmas, everyone!” shrieked a sleepy, sun-tanned and beaming daughter and her husband from the other side of the world. They reeked of youthful lust and carefree nonchalance. “We miss you all.”

Huckleberry Hudson Thomas was born six months later: a perfect, hirsute, chunk of life, arriving one balmy Sunday afternoon in July like a Band-Aid of hope and happiness. He glued together a sad, fragmented family. My baby (who has just turned 30, herself) had had a baby. And nothing prepared me for the overwhelming tidal wave of endorphin-inducing love and optimism I felt.

The “new normal” was no longer a pretence, but full of promise. My future suddenly stretched before me again, like the proverbial yellow-bricked road. From the second I first saw Huck’s battle-bruised face and cradled my labour-weary, brave daughter in my arms I understood the circle of life. I got it. This was the whole point. The real deal. I stopped acting.

“The great thing about being a grandmother is that you get to give them back,” my friends would conspiratorially whisper; the hidden implication being that this new role was one of polite endurance. I beg to differ.

Becoming a grandmother is like winning the ultimate prize. It allows one to revisit the past; to get a second crack at the whip of motherhood. I make no bones about the fact I adored being a mum – they were truly my halcyon days. I liked having a mini-career as a journalist, but that was always a secondary pleasure. Above all, I loved the lazy rhythm of routine - slow, pushchair meanders in the park, damp, post-bath cuddles and early morning excited awakenings - punctuated by the unscripted chaos those endless mothering years involved. I missed the smug satisfaction I felt shoveling broccoli down an open mouth, the relentless bedtime stories, the satisfaction of simply getting through another day. I truly cherished my children’s childhood. And when they grew up and left home and spread their wings I felt vaguely redundant, if I’m being honest. I know it’s not fashionable to admit to that, but it’s how I felt.

I’m not remotely religious, yet I firmly believe there was some divine intervention at play in Huck’s timing. He arrived just when he was needed most, to put us back together again. He has given me back not just a rosy future, but the ability to live, once again, in the present - with a renewed sense of worth and purpose, and more undiluted joy than I ever imagined existed.

It’s a big, big love. One that I find myself surprised and privileged to feel again, with such intensity. On the cusp of his first birthday, next week, Huck is the gift that keeps on giving. A gorgeous, chubby-thighed, nugget of infectious happiness that has made everything better.

My house is full of life again. I now have a cot in my bedroom, a highchair in the kitchen, an impenetrable baby-gate on the stairs and regularly sweep my coffee table of art books to make space for yet another noisy Fisher-Price gizmo.

I recently had him for four days. Sole charge. My fitness tracker kept telling me I’d achieved 10,000 steps by 10am. That's because Huck and I had already walked to Starbucks and been to Battersea Park to feed the ducks. He goes to bed at 7pm and wakes up at 6.45am. I go to sleep to the hum of his gentle snoring and stand watching his chubby little face in the morning, longing for him to wake up. He’s my drug of choice.

I look at myself in the mirror now and as corny and as clichéd as it seems, I just can’t wipe the grin off my face. I’m not acting. I am a grandmother. It is the best part I’ve ever played.