The day she went away

Every family has them. Stories. Some are peppered with so many there is no time to recount them all.

My grandmother's life is peppered with too many stories to recount in this one blog post. Her's would need a book, perhaps one day it will be on the shelves for sale, who knows.

She was born in 1925 in Trangie in country NSW and had twelve other brothers and sisters.

Fifty one years later she became a grandparent to twins, a girl and a boy. My brother and I.

She would always wear a locket with our pictures. She had two little hugging monkeys that sat on her bed, she said one was me and the other was my brother. I adored these monkeys and loved the locket.

She made me a doll, I named her Susie, I loved her. Clothes were lovingly hand made for my favourite dolls and I so we could be matching.

I used to have fond memories of her. The memories only a child can have. The ones that aren't tainted with the truth.

When I was ten, she disappeared. Literally. One day she was there and the next she was gone. Never to be heard of again. That was 27 years ago.

My grandfather called the police, told them he had seen her getting into a 4WD and that was that. They investigated. They have never found her.

I was heartbroken. What had happened to my beloved grandmother?

As time has passed and I have grown older my mother has shared more stories. It seems it wasn't uncommon for her to go walkabout.

The first time my mum was only 15. Her own mother left her without a word when she was 15. She called later to say she was living in Wagga and asked my mother's sister to go and live with her. Not my mother, just her sister. Some time passed and my grandfather took her back, as he did the subsequent times she went walkabout.

My mum is one of my biggest supports. She has always been there. She will always be there. I was devastated to find out that her own mother was not the same. She is also the best grandparent to my kids. Always there for them. There is no locket or hugging monkeys, but now I realise that isn't love.

I often wonder what happened to my grandmother. Is she dead? Is she in the Bahamas, or back in Wagga? Now we will never know.

Does your family have stories?