The granddaughter my mother would never meet

When I was a young girl, my mum was concerned because I didn’t play with dolls. She worried that I wouldn’t experience the joys of motherhood as I just seemed to have no maternal instinct! And she was sort of right, I never knew I would be an all-right mother until I was pregnant, then it all came naturally. Sadly, she never saw that side of me. My mum died at 60, from complications caused by a bee sting.

She was so vivacious and strong, she would be laughing down from heaven about how she left this earth – she always knew it’d be a strange ending. We had no idea she was allergic to bees until she was stung and spent her last few weeks in hospital, unconscious. It was a terrible demise but I will always remember her laugh and her inability to do anything by half measures.

I wish she had gotten to see me as a mother, and meet her granddaughter. Because my parents both died at 60, my daughter only ever had one set of grandparents – who lived halfway across the world. She effectively had no grandparents and it devastated me when I thought of what my mum would have been like as a grandmother. She would have doted on her, read her stories, told her about the stars and the universe. She was my role model and my reason for who I was.

I told my sister about how I felt a few years ago and she said that Cecelia didn’t need her grandmother. She explained that every time she looks at her niece, she sees Mum – it was like her spirit reincarnated. I wasn’t sure what she meant because to me Cece was just such an individual, but fast forward to today and I realise, my daughter’s best gift from the grandmother she never met was the strength to be an individual in a world of clones. I know they will meet one day but until then, I’m glad a little piece of my mum has been passed down.

Tell us, do you have a relative you wish had met another?