I’ve written about her before and just a few weeks ago we marked the 47th Yahrzeit of her husband, my Grandpa Charles the consummate gentleman.

Grandma Anne was the oldest of the five Greenberg daughters

Grandma Anne worked in her parents’ business where her numeracy and literacy skills were put to good use.

Anne married Charles and they were blessed with one child, my mother Sybil and also blessed with a truly happy marriage.

Anne and Charles both worked all their adult lives. They were never in debt but when my mother was young they lived in poorly heated, rented rooms and money was always an issue. Grandma Anne suffered from psoriasis and early in her adult life developed arthritis in both hips. She was always in pain but if anyone asked how she was she would always smile and say, “fine thank you”. As time went on Grandma walked with a stick and a marked limp. She had special aids to help her pull on her stockings as she couldn’t bend down to put on her shoes. She never complained about her situation.

Anne and Charles lived a simple life, enjoying the company of their siblings and their spouses, taking occasional holidays to see Anne’s sister Minnie in Brussels who had married Uncle Henri, and playing cards, listening to music, reading and watching television. Grandma was a really talented knitter and crocheter. In the sixties I was the envy of my friends because grandma made me crocheted mini dresses, then later crocheted waistcoats and a silver thread jumper, which I still have today. She knitted Jeremy a “Dr Who” scarf which he wore to his first proper job interview at a children’s home. The head of the Home used to talk about the long haired graduate arriving with this striped scarf wound around his neck and stretching down towards the floor. But he got the job! Grandma also knitted her new grandson in law a beautiful white cable stitch cricketing jumper which he wore for many years both on and off the cricket pitch.

Grandma and Grandpa lived in a one bedroom flat in a block directly opposite our block of flats. My brother and I saw them nearly every day and even as a teenager I would happily escape to sit with her, play whist or kalooki, do word puzzles in the newspaper and discuss what grandma would knit or crochet next for me. Her flat was a perfect refuge for a stroppy teenager! At my wedding she bravely sat at the top table without her lifelong partner, Grandpa Charles, who had died just a few months earlier.

Grandma never recovered from the loss of Grandpa Charles. He had waited to leave this earth until she had recovered from two hip replacement surgeries which allowed her, after so many years of crippling pain, to live without her daily doses of Anadin and gave her back her youthful mobility. She continued to see and play cards with her sisters, to knit and complete her daily crosswords and word puzzles but without the love of her life she was increasingly sad. By this time Jeremy and I had moved to a thatched cottage with a two acre smallholding in Devon. She came to visit and said, “this isn’t a small holding it’s an estate!” I suppose for her, who had never even owned her own flat it seemed marvellously large. Bless her, she gave us money to buy two goats that we wanted, Penelope and Prudence. We loved those goats and we appreciated that gift.

When I was in the very early stages of pregnancy with our first child, mum called to tell me that grandma had suffered a heart attack. I took the train to London and visited her in the Middlesex Hospital. She lay there, fully conscious but breathless and I sat by my beloved grandmother’s bed. My eternal regret is that (for superstitious reasons as it was not yet three months) I did not tell grandma that I was pregnant. She passed away soon after I saw her and she didn’t know that within a year a new generation would be born. She was a lovely woman – a good daughter, a loyal sister and wife and a wonderful mother and grandmother. She made my childhood very happy and I think of her nearly every day. May her memory be for a blessing