Yesterday at 2 pm my grandmother passed away. She'd been in and out of hospital quite a lot this year with breathing problems, and Mum and Reg were with her yesterday when she passed.
I'm so glad we got around to getting the 5 generations on camera, we talked about it for a long time before we actually all went up to the nursing home where Nanna was. I remember she had a wonderful time with Zeke, he went around the place saying "Hello Nanna" to every old lady he saw and they were all so taken with him. Nan especially. Every time I visited her after that she would ask how Zeke was.
As fate would have it, I never got to the hospital to visit her this time. The nursing home rang me last weekend to say that the doctor had admitted her, and no-one could contact Mum. I caught up with Mum after lunch and she said for me not to worry about it, she would go up, which she did when I left her house. Then later in the week as I drove past the hospital I thought that I should call in, but didn't get around to it. There's always something that you regret when someone close to you dies.
Nanna lived most of her adult life in Sydney, and worked at the Strawberry Hills Mail Exchange for much of that time. In the early 90s she sold her terrace house in Redfern and bought a unit in Wagga to be close to Mum. We saw quite a lot of her then. She moved to the nursing home in Junee in early 2007. I remember our trips to Sydney and staying with Nanna, and she always had bread and jam on the table after every meal. When we got older she'd take us to the South Sydney Leagues Club which was just a couple of blocks from where she lived. She didn't mind a drink or a flutter on the pokies.
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