Andrew's Grandma

Andrew's Grandma passed away this week after a short illness.

We didn't know her well. If the truth be really told we didn't actually know her at all, but we had met her, and for much too short a time had conversed, and wished we could have talked some more. Even now we can't recall her name.

We were in Goolwa, at the South Australian Wooden Boat Festival, along with forty or fifty thousand others which we were aware that we were in the town in which she lived. We hadn't planned to visit her, after all, one doesn't necessarily feel obliged to visit ones friend's geriatric grandpersons does one?

She wasn't the sort of person to take that lying down apparently, so she sought us out. One of her sons had sponsored some kids in the quick and dirty boatbuilding competition, and she wouldn't miss seeing that, and of course she knew we were there so she set out to "bump into us".

We were standing with Michael at the time.

An elderly lady with one or maybe two of those four legged walking sticks that stop just short of being a zimmer frame walked up to him and asked: "Do you know a Jo and Peter?"

Hmmm. This aroused our curiosity to say the least. I let Jo speak first, which was probably a mistake because from then on between the two of them, Michael and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Even Jo was having trouble.

It was just coincidence that the picture we were using in our brochure to promote the PDRacers included her grandson and his daughters, her great-grandchildren from 3000 kilometres away, but she didn't seem at all surprised. She was appreciative, but would have expected us to use that one!

She was just as excited for her great-grandchildren as they were to be, when Jo showed her the souvenir fridge magnet she'd bought for them.

She was bright, alert and cursed her stick and how stupid and old it made her look. We hoped that when we were her age we could be as sharp, and active and make such an impression on people we'd never met.

We hoped that when we were her age we'd be able to find someone we'd never met, at a festival among 45,000 people just by asking strangers. We hoped that when we were her age we'd be fit enough to curse our walking aid while standing all day watching our great grandchildren.

We hope now that when we're gone, someone we've spoken to for only a short time will remember us just as fondly.

She could have been in her seventies.

She was ninety-two.