Friday, January 6, 2017
Although we live far from Gran, she was always very close to us. We have wonderful memories of spending time with her as children on family holidays in Regina, and of the excitement of her visits to Ireland down through the years. As we grew older, we began to appreciate and understand all the more why everyone loved her, and enjoyed her sense of fun, and her wisdom and interest in music, literature, theatre and sport. We used to listen wide-eyed to her stories and remember how she made us laugh with renditions of Cole Porter songs, and anecdotes about famous people like Gertrude Stein and F Scott Fitzgerald. She was always warm and generous, and considerate when listening to and giving advice on opinions that were even quite different from her own. She was young at heart, and laughed with us at our funny stories like one of our friends. She even had some mysterious imaginary friends of her own, and we still reminisce and smile at the strange characters B Ed Frame, Gustave and the biblical Girgashites. Not many people have a Gran who was as passionate about James Joyce as she was about the Regina Roughriders, and as knowledgeable about politics as she was about popular films. We were lucky to have Gran with us for so many enjoyable years, and to have shared so many fun times, great conversations and laughs, and warm hugs with her. We will miss her terribly and we will treasure memories of lovely moments with her forever. Althought we cannot be with our family in Regina today, we are thinking about Gran now with great fondness. Karl, Barry, Myles, Graham, Evelyn and Peter. (Dublin, Ireland)
