Your colored crotchet blanket would lay over me, my fingers poking through the holes, pretending to be a spider wriggling. I’d be eating white bread and peanut butter sandwiches and I’d hear you in the kitchen on the phone speaking to a friend.

I was probably feeling a little indifferent and bored as a kid, waiting for my mum to pick me up from your house. But the peanut butter sandwiches always tasted better when you made them for me.

Bluey the Budgie would squeak in his cage down in the back living room, you would whistle to him.

You called us all “love” and it was true. Your life was about your family.

You were the best back seat driver ever. No one told you this at the time.

The plastic Christmas tree came out every year and having Christmas at your house was one of the highlights of the year and always ended in boogie board races in the pool with the smell of the BBQ.

When I returned from London as a young adult, after I had escaped life to accept I was gay, you walked up to me in the kitchen the first time you saw me and hugged me. And said “Love, I love you no matter what”. The first family of mine to do that.

You loved the midday movie.

You had one of the most wonderful smiles. And you gave it and had it the most with your family.

Roast dinners at your house were THE function.

Your soft singing showed your love, whoever you were nursing.

You were always waiting at the door for us when we arrived to visit.

When we left you stood at the door and waved and say “hooray!”

Your partner in crime Ed, left this world with you and your children sitting by his side. And you tried to keep going without him but it’s OK, life wasn’t the same.

A year ago today you said goodbye to this earth and we said goodbye to you. My grandmother, my Nana Edith, you are missed. You will always be missed. And you were also my last surviving grandparent. The four of you make up me and I couldn’t be prouder.