Coffee, cake, cigarettes and cards
Today I watched my last remaining grandparent’s funeral via livestream. Living overseas and being very pregnant, I didn’t want to risk something going medically wrong and getting stuck in Australia for months without my husband. So, I decided not to make the trip home and instead made use of current funeral parlour technology to still feel part of the service. Watching my younger cousins sit beside their parents through my laptop screen, I felt a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t there in person to support my mother and celebrate my grandmother. Nevertheless, I am grateful to have been able to listen to the stories that, together, painted the picture of an industrious yet social woman who overcame the grief of losing both a child and the love of her life.
I am no stranger to funerals. As the first-born child of relatively young parents (by today’s standards), and with my mother also the first-born of her siblings, I was lucky enough to know and remember all four of my grandparents, five of my great-grandparents, and all my aunties and uncles. As the numbers dwindled over the years, funerals became gatherings of familiar faces, old photos and cut sandwiches prepared by church volunteers.
In the case of my grandmother, dementia had taken her mind and soul years before her body gave out, and, in the end, her life had become more a matter of waiting for death. I don’t mean to be cold when I say that. It is simply the reality of the final chapter of a life well lived, in circumstances where sickness had stolen both logic and memory. There was still joy in daily life, though. Visits from family, hoarding nursing home mugs in her closet, sing-a-longs in the chapel.
Life is both long and short. Some years drag and some decades disappear. As we know but seldom dwell on, the only certainty in life is death. In the current age of AI dependency, social media addiction, and acute loneliness, it can take something as sombre as a funeral to bring us back down to earth.
My grandmother loved coffee, cake, cigarettes and cards. Although not the healthiest of habits, she managed to survive without significant illness for much of her statistically average-length life. It is all about balance, as they say. But what struck me most about the anecdotes shared was the world in which she lived. It was just so… real.
She lived before the internet age. Before dishwashers and drones. Before smartphones. Before the use of large language models began replacing independent thought. She never asked a computer for advice. There was no meal delivery service for those nights she didn’t feel like cooking for her family of seven.
Her life revolved around working, child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, and, most importantly, relationships. Saturday night meant dinner and cards at a friend’s place; school holidays were spent with extended family in caravans by the beach. Stress was relieved momentarily by a morning coffee or an afternoon cigarette. For what her life lacked in convenience, it was abundant in human connection, conversation, and homemade meals. A simple life, well lived.
The way we live today draws many parallels. I, too, need a daily caffeine hit and am addicted to sweet treats. But the way in which I interact with others is so vastly different, with my phone screen being my closest confidant. In this chronically online era, we are simultaneously more connected and more isolated than ever. The social media platforms that once genuinely helped us maintain relationships have been reduced to addictive mass-marketing networks.
As I prepare to welcome my first child into the world, I am reconsidering my own habits. I desperately do not want to be a screen family. I want to create an environment of dinner table chats, family traditions, and warm memories. I want to raise children who can think independently. I am grateful for modern conveniences. But I must remember my grandmother and the joy that can be experienced through real life, homemade and face-to-face. At the end of the day, all we really need is a good chat over coffee and cake, and maybe a round of cards. I’ll pass on the cigarettes, though.
Written 11 August 2026.
