My grandmother.
You were a kind grandmother. Of course, I only knew you as a middle-aged
widow, already set in her ways.You knew everyone in this city and wanted
to know everything about the place. In that way, I seem to take after you.
This was embarrassing for us when we went to town with you in the school
holidays; you'd stop people even if they didn't know you. You had a social
life, full of people, and it was clearly a life-long commitment you had
made. You were only sixty-nine when you died, but most of your body was
already worn out. I went with you to the doctor in the year before you
died. She had never seen you before and was shocked at how much was wrong
with you: heart, lungs, kidneys, bowel, bladder, legs, eyes, diabetes,
gout. I don't think I'll go on.
You carried a secret with you to your early grave. A baby,
your first, born out of wedlock in 1929 in
Perth. She found us not long after you died. As a family, in retrospect,
we offered you so many cues to tell this secret, but you never did. That
can't have been good for your health. It's not something easily forgotten,
even after the birth of your five other children.
Some of your sisters are still alive, in their
eighties and nineties. You died at a bingo
game, which seemed a most appropriate way to end your social life.