Taking Mary Home

My grandmother spent most of my life telling us two things: that she didn't like Americans, and that when she died, she wanted her ashes in the Mersey. She said both of these to a room full of Americans she had raised. In England we take ownership of our people. Nobody is Ann or Kenda; it's our Ann, our Kenda, and once you're an our, you don't get out. She left Liverpool in her twenties and spent over sixty years trying to get back. So this summer, a year after she died, we took her in my uncle's carry-on, which is probably not how she imagined it.

I'm forty-eight. This was the year death stopped being something that happens to other people's families and pulled up a chair at mine. I've started wondering what I'll be in somebody's eulogy, and whether it's the version of me I'd pick. Here's what I know I got from her: the spit fire, the jig, and the way I claim people whether they like it or not. What did someone leave in you? Reply and tell me. I read them all.

The whole story, the ferry included, is in the Diary. Read it here.