Why June exists

Her name was June.

To me she was my Nana, though I said it differently to all the other grandkids. "Nannehhh, can a av a biccy?" She loved that.

She was a cup of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other kind of girl, swapping between the sip and the draw. She was obsessed with American ghost stories and would shush you mid sentence if they were on. She once confiscated every grandchild's phone so we would pay proper attention during family time with the ghosties. She had pink in her hair at seventy-odd, for no reason other than she wanted it there. She was bold, boisterous and beautifully bizarre, and she was nothing but love when I came out to her. She immediately wanted to talk about boys.

More than anything, we had music. She used to get me to sleep by playing me Elvis. She danced in her kitchen to the golden oldies, always the life and soul of the party. And there is one song that will always be her, "Walkin' Back to Happiness" by Helen Shapiro. Part of my taste in music is just hers, handed down. Music was how she connected.

When I was young she came home from seeing a clairvoyant and told me that someone in our family was going to do something that mattered. A person in a suit, in the big city, making an impact. She was certain it was me. I have carried that ever since.

She had cancer twice. The second time was lung cancer, diagnosed on Christmas Eve, and she was gone by the middle of February. I got the call to come home. I held her hand, and even then she found the strength to hold mine back with both of hers and open her eyes to look at me. When it was just the two of us I told her I loved her. She died that night. I think she waited for me.

Then we had to arrange the funeral.

We were given the usual choice. Handle the funeral media ourselves, or leave it to the Funeral Director. What was on offer was a Word document and a PowerPoint, put together as an admin job at the end of somebody's very long day. That is nobody's fault. Funeral Directors are on call around the clock, carrying other people's grief, and no one ever trained them to be designers. But it was not going to be my Nana. She was not a photo stapled to a blank page, or a slideshow with the music out of sync. So I got to work.

The family had a box with about three hundred photographs of her life inside it. I scanned two hundred of them, cleaned every one up, took the scratches out, brought her back. I animated her, so she waved and blew a kiss and smiled again. I printed the photograph that sat on top of her coffin. I designed her Order of Service, gold foil and all.

And in the family group chat, while everyone else was underwater, I sent song after song after song. Hers. Getting us all remembering her through the music she used to play.

Then I made her a memorial video, four minutes of her life cut to a slow cover of Dancing Queen, because she was our dancing queen, and we played it at the wake in front of everybody. I cried about fifteen times making it.

Somewhere in all of that, exhausted, I typed Helen Shapiro's name into her Order of Service as Helen Sharpino. The song that will always be her, and I got the name wrong, at her own funeral. I still cannot quite believe I did it. It is the whole reason June shows you every word exactly as it will print, and asks you to check every name and date before you send it.

Afterwards my family came to me in tears to thank me. They asked me to send the video straight to their phones so they would always have her with them. Someone said, "Mam would have absolutely loved what you've done. She would be so proud of you."

And that is when it clicked. Every family on this earth deserves that kind of send off. But not every family has a Luke. And even the ones who do might not have the time that I had.

So I built June.

It started with the Order of Service, the one thing from the day that everyone takes home and keeps. The rest of what I made for her is coming.

She is in it more than I can properly explain. The company carries her name. One of our designs, The Douthwaite, is her surname. Another, The Chambers, is her sister, my Aunty Carol. Even the pink is the pink she wore in her hair.

Cancer came for her twice, and the second time it took her in eight weeks, while she still had pink in her hair. So 1% of every June order goes to charities working to stop other families losing someone before their time.

Death is natural.
Premature death is not.

I should say the rest of it, because it is true. It feels strange building a company in her name. Having your whole soul invested in something is beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Beautifully dangerous. My grief is tied up in this business. The smartest part of me knows that telling you this story is using her. But she was never shy of attention, and she loved being the life and soul of it, and I think she would be lapping this up. She would love the fuss.

June helps me remember her. It also lets me not sit in it. I know I have not sat in it enough yet.

Maybe me and Nana together are going to make the rest real.