My gram

My grandmother was an interesting woman.

As a child of her time, she got 7 children, worked hard and was not afraid to deal with many challenges.
She was in the resistance during WW2, with the rest of her family, and apart from the gratitude of her children and grandchildren never received the acknowledgement she should have had.

She was bot a person with a huge ego.
She lived her life in touch with the people around her and with nature and was happy with that.

She was different from other women though.
She always thought it to be important to stay relaxed, and to develop more of her talents than motherhood alone.
She was a good actress, a wonderful singer and she took each tuesday afternoon off to do something she felt she needed to do. That could be playing cards with her nieces, drinking tea in town with me, or anything else that popped in her mind.

She told me it kept her refreshed, aware of the needs of other people, and able to deal with her severely asthmatic son who wouldn't live long. (He died at the age of 33 in her arms).

My gram taught me how to live. How to deal with other people, how to deal with myself.
She taught me that in order to develop myself, I should never be afraid of thinking my own thoughts. All great thinkers and scientist, all great poets, all those great men and women of history had the same characteristics: the inner need to make the world a better place, an inner need to express themselves, and the ability to discover which thoughts would renew the world.

To me, she was just my gram who gave me chocolate when I left so the sweetness would accompany me on my way home. She was the best person in my life. She saved my life when I was a baby and later, when she was already dead, her lessons saved me from many awkward situations.

Now I realise she was a wise woman. A very wise woman.
.