Death has closed another chapter in my 16-year life

16-year-old Ellie Menton describes the bittersweet loss of her beloved grandmother earlier this month

THERE is nothing more painful than loss.

It doesn’t matter what it is that is gone from your life, it always feels like a punch to the gut, because a chapter is ending.

I don’t think I’m ever really ready for a chapter to finish. I never feel like I wrote the chapter quite as well as I could have, and having to write the final few words and move on is bitter.

This month I lost my grandmother.

It was something I had been worrying about for years, losing my grandmother, but on some level I never really expected it to happen, either.

Grandmothers are curious creatures. Frightfully strong and omnipresent beings, who at some point somehow convince you that they are everlasting immortals.

Unfortunately, they are not.

A chapter in my life, 16 years long, has ended, and on the book goes.

It didn’t end at all the way I thought it would.

I mean, all of the usual suspects were there; the loneliness that feels like it’s crushing all of the air out of your lungs; the stupid little connotations that set off the puffy red waterworks, and that weird mix of being anxious to keep busy but also being too exhausted even to shake another hand.

It was horrible and harrowing, but there was also a whole lot more to it than I expected.

The dementia that had attacked my grandmother’s beautiful mind had made our annual family Christmas gatherings a whole lot less fun-filled than in years previous.

But coming together to sing carols and hymns to her the night before she passed, or camping out at the nursing home while she slowly faded, made me feel a sense of complete belonging I hadn’t realised I had missed.

I didn’t expect to crack a smile when listening to the gorgeous eulogy, but by god my grandmother was a funny woman with even funnier stories to tell.

I didn’t expect to feel relieved, but I was so indescribably glad that she was finally at rest, and her poor mind didn’t have to strain anymore.

After the funeral, I returned to my grandfather’s house, where my aunt presented me with a little polka-dot bell.

Each cousin had received one, our Granny Bell, to ring whenever we felt lost.

I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready for the chapter to end so awfully bittersweet, but there it is and here I am, and on the book goes.

A dear friend of mine wrote a slam poem this summer, entitled The Ones Who Are Gone. It had always reminded me of my grandmother, who in a sense had been gone for a while because of her dementia.

I read it religiously nowadays, sometimes happily, other times staining the page with little tears.

Hopefully, with my bell, the ones who are gone will not break my heart so much.

Ellie is 16 and attends Scoil Mhuire Gan Smál in Blarney, Co Cork.