Grammy Rose let me stay home from school in the same way she let me leave food on my plate. No disapproval, no shaking of the head. Just a smile and a nod. She wrote to the school and informed them I was taking an extended holiday. Surprisingly, the school didn’t make a fuss. My English teacher, Mrs Miller, even sent a note to say she thought it was a good idea for me to take a break. She claimed I was too grown up to be healthy, whatever that meant.

When I lived with Grammy Rose, she cooked for me every night. She did my washing, made sure there was always food in the house. She was horrified when I pulled out the vacuum cleaner the day after I moved in.

“You’re here for a holiday, Trisha. I’m taking care of you, remember.”

No one had taken care of me before and no one has taken care of me since.

The one thing Grammy Rose asked me to help her with was the garden. The sprawling quarter-acre of land was proving more difficult to maintain due to her “aches and pains”, as she begrudgingly admitted. Every day of those two months we spent time in the garden or the small greenhouse. She taught me to weed and prune, plant and propagate, feed and water. She taught me the names of plants, what position suited them best – too much sun could be worse than too little. Her guiding principle was that the health of all plants began and ended with the soil. Soil was everything to Grammy Rose. I couldn’t believe a person could be so enthusiastic about their compost bin – I didn’t even know what compost was. As for worms, Grammy Rose would squeal with delight every time she spotted one.

Grammy Rose loved all of her plants, but she had a special affection for her roses, tending to them as if they were pets. She’d talk to them, feed them, make sure they were well looked after. One of my clearest memories is of Grammy Rose wandering around her garden, pausing to smell her roses and smiling as if to say, “life can’t get any better than this”. She claimed her name had nothing to do with it. She’d have loved roses more than any other plant even if her parents had called her Daisy or Fern. Grammy Rose was always making funny little remarks. Something I took a few days to get used to.

I never made it to Grammy Rose’s funeral. She died while I was at university and by the time I found out, it was too late to get a flight home.