My grandmother, my teacher

At 6am today, my grandmother breathed her last and mooched on to whatever is next.

While I didn’t spend as much time with my grandmother as I would have liked, I am sad. She was an amazing woman and she died too young, just 69.

Grandma had a challenging life. She and my grandfather worked hard to raise five children. Grandma was a teacher and spent nights sewing clothes for her children, keeping house, and studying towards more qualifications. She studied all her working life, eventually achieving her Masters in her fifties. She had a strong interest in Aboriginal culture and welfare; I still remember the day she introduced me to Geoff Clark and took me out to the Aboriginal settlement at Framlingham.

Summers, when we kids would visit, she stayed up nights with me, watching the tennis and eating jelly and ice cream. She always had a book I ‘had to read’ and when I was around 12, she unlocked the cabinet with her ‘best books’ and opened up the journals of her parents and grandparents to me. She had a very strong sense of family history and always told stories about her ancestors. When I saw her about eighteen months ago, she gave me a copy of of the travel diary of one of our ancestors who sailed a true sea voyage. Grandma had edited and published it, wanting the adventure to live on.

She retired and looked forward to reading, writing and the pursuit of personal enrichment. Sadly, shortly after retiring, her body slowly began to give way. While it took many years to eventually wear her down, her quality of life was limited and she never enjoyed the retirement we all wished she might have.

My wedding in April this year was a big undertaking for her but she made it. She came to the ceremony and the reception, beamed the whole time and even giggled as I struggled to pin a corsage on her dress.

Today I pause and give thanks that I had a grandmother who showed me that to learn is to grow, and that family is everything.