A few weeks ago marked the first anniversary of my grandma’s passing. Though it was October, Melbourne provided plenty of cooler days, so I wore a few of her jumpers and coats that I had opted to take when all of her things were divvied up among the family (the woman had amazing style!) as a way of feeling her presence during those weeks. I was sad because I obviously missed her, though we had a great 27 years together, but I was mostly sad because it reminded me of all the conversations I never had with her.

I always had a tradition of catching up with Nana at least once a week – I’d go to her place after school or work and sit in her little loungeroom with a lemonade and we’d talk. But being the foolish, ignorant teenager that I was, I’d often spend more time looking at the clock figuring out if enough time had passed for me to head home without seeming like I wanted to run out of there. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my grandma, but she was from a different era; we didn’t have a lot in common and she’d always find a way to worry about something.

About a year before she died, I became really interested in learning my family history. I was fascinated by the lives and stories of those who came before me. By this time, though, Nana was 95 years old and her memory was not what it once was.

I still spoke to her every week; now living in Melbourne, I’d taken to calling her on my lunchbreaks. Our conversations steadily became variations of the same dialogue until I could essentially write a transcript of the phone call and it would be a near-exact match to the following week’s call.

In the hope of learning something I didn’t know about Nana’s life, one particular day I asked about her childhood. The things that had made me feel so disconnected from her as a teen now fascinated me – how she grew up in a massive family, lost a brother in WWII, lived in mostly very remote places, and was a member of the Red Hat’s Society – I wanted to learn about all of these things and more.

Just before she was about to end the call with the anticipated “Alright, pet, look after yourself, won’t you. Love you. Bye-bye, love. Bye,” I interjected – “Nana, what was it like growing up on the farm in Warwick?” There was a brief pause, then, “Oh, I don’t know, love. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. Alright, pet, look after yourself, won’t you. Love you. Bye-bye, love. Bye,” and then a clunk.

It had been a fool’s hope, but my heart sank all the same. I tried again the next phone call, and the next. I dropped people’s names and mentioned things I knew she had done as a kid, anything to jog her memory. I think I had some romantic idea planted by too many sad movies when one word opens the flood gates of a Dementia-sufferer’s long-term memory. But it wasn’t to be.

I was too late.

I sat in my car, after hanging up from my final unsuccessful attempt, with my head in my hands letting the tears stream for all the hours I had wasted so many years prior. Back then, Nana’s memory was perfect. She would have loved me asking those questions, and she would have talked my ear off recalling every fine detail of her life and her family’s history. But I had been so foolish, self-centred and disinterested then.

I am lucky in a sense – Nana had an obsession with documenting everything. A few months after she died, Dad found a little red book that listed every piece of clothing she bought and its price over several years. She had a diary for every year, and my Dad – being a lover of family history himself, and an only child – has kept everything.

So the information is not lost, just how I will learn it. I would give a lot to be able to sit down and listen to her stories about growing up, and everything she learned about our family tree. I’ll never get that time, though. It’s a hard lesson I’ve learned, and I’m not making the same mistake with my other grandma – my last surviving grandparent.

We have such a limited time on this earth, and I for one am making sure I have plenty to tell my grandchildren.

And I’ll give them a lemonade and make the ignorant little cherubs listen.