Earlier this year, I lost my grandmother. It was a very traumatic experience because we were very close and my grandfather was alone with her in Portugal while we were all over here. We managed to get a friend, who is a travel agent, to help my mother, my aunt and I out so that we could get on the next plane to Portugal.
Travelling to deal with family emergency is a very surreal experience. For the three of us to be on a plane going overseas together would, under any other circumstances, have been an exciting experience.
Somehow we found it difficult to remember what it was we were on our way to do. Because we weren`t driving, there was no way to rush the proceedings. We were at the mercy of the international travel machine, and as a result, ended up enjoying ourselves.
Occasionally, we would lapse into a moment of sorrow as we remembered how "Ma" (I called her that in imitation of my mother and aunt from a very young age) had enjoyed airline food - a trait which I have inherited. And how she would always steal the little plastic containers for storage at home - a trait which I have not.
Arrival in Portugal was very traumatic. A family friend came to collect us from the airport, and took us to my grandfather, who could do nothing other than tell the story of how he had found her over and over again.
She was a very social lady, and she had made friends in the most unlikely of places.
Georgina Guedes, Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm
What was incredible at the time was the rallying around of people who had loved her. She was a very social lady, and she had made friends in the most unlikely of places.
From a young architect`s wife who lived down the road to the house cleaner who came on her allocated day, rushing up the stairs because she saw that all the windows were open and thought that my grandmother was feeling better and had to be given very sweet tea for the shock, people reminded us at every turn what a special woman she had been.
This morning, a friend of ours sent a link to a blog that they had stumbled across when doing an Internet search for my grandmother`s name.
It was written by a man who was a school student of my grandmother`s when she was in Mozambique. He had heard about her death and was moved enough to write an entry, remembering her as one who had inspired in him a love of literature.
The way in which he recalled her efforts to encourage and push him once she had ascertained his interests reminded me so much of her relationships with her children and grandchildren, and the extended family that she seemed to gather around her. Her tireless efforts to help people make the best of themselves, and to do the best for them is what I will remember her for.
How incredible that this poignant memory has been brought to my family from a student of my grandmother`s that none of us can recall, through a medium that didn`t exist 10 years ago.
It`s a turn of circumstance that would have fascinated her, and it would have pleased her that the mode of communication, while based in technology, has seen people that she has cared about in her life getting in touch with each other.
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