Life Goes On: June's Story — Two Years of Life-Changing Events at 92
Links to all five episodes:
My grandma June survived the Coventry Blitz as a child.
At 91, she survived a stroke, the death of her husband of more than 60 years, just weeks after, and managed a hip replacement the following year. Whereas most documentaries about older people seek to cover a lifetime, Life Goes On focuses on just two years of June's life in her nineties.
What started out as a film meant for family only turned out to be a truly touching video document on what the inner life of old people looks like - an area of life so often dismissed as ‘not commercial’ or ‘depressing’.
My grandma isn't a celebrity. But she is a charming raconteuse, and what she gives here, over 5 short films, is an unflinchingly honest account of what she — and plenty of people in their eighties, nineties, and beyond — go through as autumn and winter arrive in their lives.
Ageing alone, grief after a long marriage, stroke recovery in your nineties — this is what it looks like, from someone actually living it.