14,055 words = a draft of Gran's Memoirs

My Gran has had an amazing life. Growing up, she would tell us stories from her own childhood. I listened, but didn't really take too much in. Who cares about "ancient times" when you're a kid right?!

It wasn't really until after I left school that I started becoming interested in what her life had been like and a few years ago I discovered that she had been writing down her stories so that one day when she was gone, we'd be able to read them.

Last year my Grandfather died. He was 87 years old. Had been born in England, fought in world war 2 and raised 3 children. He never really talked about his life much, and I unfortunetly didn't take to much interest. While going through his house we discovered that he never threw anything away, and I mean anything! I found a newspaper that he'd made at age 10 years old. I love it. We found papers calling him up for the war and others implying he'd been in NZ when we always thought he'd been overseas. And now, we have no way of every asking him about it.

All of this made me even more concious of how much experience and knowledge my Gran has, and that she won't be around for much longer (her health is a whole other blog!). So, I've taken her stories, and the memoirs she wrote on her first 18 years of life (where she was born in Pakistan, raised in India and went to boarding school in England during the war before coming to NZ) and typed them up.

So far, they are 29 pages, or 14,055 words long.

From reading these memoirs and amazing stories, I have so many more questions for her. I've told her that one day soon I'll come round with my laptop and together we'll flesh out the current draft and add more stories.

I know I want to be able to share these stories with my children. I hope that my Mother will do hers too. And one day I'll do my own. What an awesome family heirloom to pass down.