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So here's the thing: I'm having a difficult day, and a very difficult evening. My brother-out-law has, with some difficulty, been getting me through it... and then I picked up a couple of photos I'd printed out, and was reminded of something.
Someone.
My grandmother.
My grandmother was the most amazing woman I've ever met. She was wonderful - kind, Christian in the best possible - and only the best possible - sense of that word. Generous of spirit, and indomitable - she went back to university in her seventies and got a B.A. in Art History, after which she volunteered at the Art Gallery while she made an approach to doing postgraduate work. She delivered Meals on Wheels and went to aerobics. She took little old ladies on outings - little old ladies who were younger than she was. She was in her 80s before illness slowed her down.
She died on the 7th of September, 2001, a few weeks before her 85th birthday.
My grandmother is my role model, my inspiration, everything I want to be. She was and remains my greatest hero.
Two photos of her below the cut. Both were taken during the Second World War, when she was serving in Egypt. She met my grandfather there - he caught shrapnel in his thigh, and they met while he was recovering. Then he went back to the front. They married in Cairo after the war - both in uniform.
The first is of Grandmother and a man called Taki. All I know of Taki is this: they shared the office that is visible in the background (behind the truck she called her "station wagon"), and he apparently loved having his picture taken.
The second is of Grandmother and three of the Women's Auxiliary Ambulance Service - "WAUSies". My grandmother is the one on the left. The other women are recorded as "Bina, Tubby and Kay".
( Pictures below cut. )
My grandmother was a farm girl from the north of Scotland, thousands of miles from home. I don't know whether this photo was taken before or after she learned that her baby brother, an RAF fighter pilot, had been shot down and killed in France; she visited his grave there in 1965.
I miss her deeply.
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