About my Grandma, who passed away on 31st March 2007, aged 90

I would like to write a few words about Grandma - and also Grandad, since the two of them were very much a couple until he passed away 6 years ago.

Living down South at the moment, I realise that I haven't been around very much in the past dozen years or so. However, that doesn't mean that I haven't felt the presence of my family as a constant source of strength. My grandparents (and lately, of course, just Grandma) had always been there as both the foundation and the pinnacle of our close-knit clan. I am so very, very sad that they are now both gone.

Looking back, my grandparents always had the beneficial effect of bringing me back down to earth, as illustrated by the following quote from a letter Grandma wrote me back in 1992, just after I'd moved down to Cambridge:

"We are very pleased to hear that you are enjoying Cambridge, and that you are having such a pleasant time when not working.
Well, we haven't got so many exotic people to meet, with foreign names and from such wildly different countries, but we are going to have a Broth night on Monday, so that will have to do."

I can just imagine her cheeky grin as she wrote that (she did do a good line in cheeky grins).

As everyone who has spent even half an hour with her will know, she had very strong opinions on most things and she was as stubborn and independent-spirited a lady as I have ever known. That fortitude made her a grandmother of whom to be extremely proud. She was also expert at keeping Grandad's exuberant mischief in check. Now that they are together again, I am sure that she will have resumed this task with relish.

Such strong characters both, we miss them dearly - but they will never truly be gone: not so long as we remember them and, from time to time, recognise the little bits of them that are in ourselves.

Sally, 5th April 2007