My Father's Mother

My father’s mother, Nellie May, is the only one of my grandparents that I knew personally. She was one of five daughters of Bernard Wood and Alice Cannon. She was widowed at a fairly early age, and worked for most of her life: a necessity rather than a feminist conviction.

My father’s early memories of her are of a strong woman. Despite this, she left most of the rearing of her children to her sisters, whom my father called “the committee”. As she worked, she left the children in the care of one sister or another. The sisters were always very close and worked almost as a unit. My father disliked his aunts, I believe because of the way they treated him. My father was an intelligent boy but they treated him like an idiot. Nellie worked for years as a weaver and was sought after and headhunted for her skill in the more esoteric forms of weaving. She was gifted seamstress, beader and knitter, and my father remembers her knitting an outfit for herself in a weekend, on fine needles no less. She was also a very good ballroom dancer, with lovely legs (which I remember being so even when she was old).

When my father reached his early teens Nellie was working as a cook in an hotel, which she did for some years as well.

By the time I knew her she had started drinking, and in the later part of her life she was an alcoholic who would have drink of beer as her first act on waking in the morning.

My memories of her were of a large warm woman with a large personality. She was affectionate and amusing and it was always nice to see her. Our contact with her was not frequent, and there were usually some disagreement between my father and his relatives, thus my contact with her was patchy through the years. In the last few years of her life, our contact with her increased. She died of breast cancer aged about 78. Her death was fairly quick and was due more to the treatment than the disease. The breast cancer was not surprising, as she had known about the lump in her breast for several years, but had not done anything about it while her husband was in hospital dying after stroke – she did nothing about it and died of it. The last time I saw her she seemed sanguine about it, however her death upset me – I had just begun to get to know her when she died.