Grandma lives on in her writings

I LEARNED recently the importance of documenting memories and writing stories.

This was after the passing of my grandma, Jan.

My first memory of Jan was while playing with my cousins in the back garden of her house under Mt Wellington in Tasmania.

I loved playing in Grandma’s garden as I could get as dirty as I wanted and not get told off.

This also was one of the first times my grandma wrote about my cousins and I was playing with bugs in her garden.

When I was a little older she showed me these stories she had written in a plastic binder.

I read a story about her in the 1967 Hobart fires, which resulted in her having to rescue her four children.

I learnt so much about her life I didn’t know before.

When I was 12 I was asked what I wanted to be when I was older, I remember saying that I wanted to be a writer. Looking back now, it was due to my grandma’s influence. Jan had four children and 13 grandchildren, two of whom she raised with her husband for the past 15 years. She wrote stories to leave memories for my family. As I grew older I moved away from Tasmania and started a journalism degree in Melbourne. I was generally pretty useless at keeping in touch with my grandparents, but I would always see her for Christmas every year and tell her all about my life. I started an internship in July this year, where I worked at a newspaper. It was the first time I had my writing published. I was ecstatic to see something that I loved doing put into print.

On July 21, Jan passed away.

I felt guilty not spending time with her, not calling her, not visiting her, I felt like I could have done so much more.

I remember at her funeral one of my cousins turning to me and saying: “She used to rapidly search the paper every day to see what story you had written today and she would force all of us to read it.”

She was the type of person who was always proud of children and grandchildren.

Our family is very lucky that she’s left behind stories she’s written in her book, Jandy.