my grandma, Madge Folker, who was my mum’s mum, died earlier in this year.

Both my grandfather’s died when I was much younger, but I’m lucky to have two great grandma’s and I spent a fair bit of time with both of them during school hols when I was younger. I remember one time when Dad’s mum was “fortunate” to have me at her place over a week when I had the measles, or mumps, or chicken pox or some other contagious nasty [ thanks grandma ]. I also spent a fair bit of time out at Millmerran on school holidays and loved it.

I always remembered Grandma Folker as a very happy, caring and strong willed person. She went to church and apparently had a sweet tooth. Grandma was sick for a while and spent the last couple of years of her life in a nursing home in Toowoomba and when we’d go to see her it would leave me quite upset, because she just wasn’t the person I knew her as. Anyways, I was really glad that she got to meet Jackson and she was just a fantastic grandma and when she passed away I told mum that I wanted to speak at the funeral.

I’ve never been to another funeral, or if I have, it was when I was so young that I don’t remember it… Speaking at the funeral and doing a part of the eulogy was without doubt one of the hardest things I have had to do in my life, but I am glad I got the chance to.

This is my part of the eulogy….

I’d like to share some memories of grandma from her grandchildren.

Some of my memories of grandma are:

She loved sport and when we come out to grandma’s I knew the cricket was on, or the tennis was on, or sports report was on the news and if I wanted to watch it, there’d be no dramas, I’d get my way and Nicole would lose the argument over what would be on the television.

Grandma was pretty nifty in the kitchen and she’d make great food for us. Whether it was a great hot porridge on a cold winter’s morning, a great ham and salad sandwich or my favourites the lemon butter drops.

Grandma would also play board games with us….. a lot. I really enjoyed this and we’d play a shopping game I cant remember the name of, where you had to draw cards for the shops you had to go too to buy things and do that in a certain order and whoever got through all the shops first would win the game. We also would play Squatter, a tennis game, a cricket game, rummykin as well as playing 500 and Canasta.

Dennis, Scott and I would play cricket in grandma’s backyard in Gillespie Street for hours. The pitch was set up in the middle of the backyard and a big bushy shrub was the wicket keeper and we had a whole set of rules set up for different bits of the backyard. Grandma had a garden which ran down the side of our “pitch” and it quite often got in the way of a good drive and we’d knock over a snapdragon, or some other plant. Grandma would watch our games from the kitchen window sometimes and I’m sure the other boys would have cringed and looked around at the kitchen window to see if grandma was there to see us take out parts of her garden with our most recent shot of the day. Truth be told, I’m sure she wouldn’t have cared too much.

Grandma always (it seemed to me) had a transistor radio on in the kitchen tuned into ABC radio, so now sometimes when I am listening to the ABC or Triple J radio and I hear the ABC news jingle, I think of grandma, and more specifically grandma’s kitchen and then I think of those lemon drops…..

From Cassie and Jamie, Susan and Bradley, Dennis, Scott, Laura and Rachel and Nicole and myself, as well as her great grandchildren in Jackson, Harrison and Lucy. Thanks for being a great grandma, we love you and we’ll miss you.

bye for now grandma… I’ll be sure to celebrate our 50th / 100th birthday’s when they come around (our birthday’s were 50 years and 1 day apart)