My Grandma died last January at the grand old age of 96.

I was pregnant with Jacob at the time and all of my energy was being sucked into my womb.

I didn’t cry at her funeral – and I still don’t cry – because she was so ready to go. She was bored and lonely and in pain. She said the worst thing about the nursing home where she spent her last years was that there was no one to talk to.

Lately, I’ve been missing her.

She was a constant in my life. I know her phone number off by heart.

When someone noteworthy dies, you list their achievements and talk about how extraordinary they were.

But my grandma was ordinary. Her greatest achievement was us; her kids, grandkids and great grandkids.

She lived a quiet, frugal life. Her freezer was full of questionable meat and bakery goods with marked down sale stickers. Her days were punctuated by cups of tea, handfuls of pills, a complex hand washing system that included plastic bags, waging war on lawn weeds, phone calls with her sisters and the ‘stories’ that she claimed not to watch.

She took me in when I was 18 and let me live with her, rent-free, for a year. I was undoubtedly a huge pain in the ass but she never said anything about it. I think she was grateful for the company and liked the pizza I brought home from work.

She was generous to me, in word and deed. When I visited during uni, she would send me home with a pumpkin and some oranges. I loved how sweet and weird that was.

Grandma suffered a litany of tragic, premature losses. Her mother died at 50, her husband and son-in-law died in accidents, her daughter died too young. Then her sisters died naturally, one by one, leaving her with no-one to call. She appeared stoic in the face of this grief but truthfully, I think she was extremely depressed. She said that she was being kept alive as punishment.

My whole life, I thought Grandma was going to die. And she almost did die a lot of times. I rehearsed for her death for 44 years. When it finally did happen, it was like the last petal falling off a rose. That sounds corny but grandma will always be a red rose to me. A tough old heirloom that kept blooming through neglect and drought and storm. An old-fashioned lady who was affronted by exposed midriffs and insisted I wear a petticoat to my Year 8 school disco.

I wish she’d met Jacob. He looks like her. One of my favourite memories is when she met Joey for the first time. Grandma was at her most joyful when she was bouncing a baby.

She also secretly liked animals; the three-legged feral hell cat and the possums that lived in her shed, Blueberry and Strawberry, her cows.

My soundtrack to her is a wireless playing country music, a kettle boiling and her voice calling me darlin’. I see creamy white chrysanthemums, Naked Lady lilies, and butter yellow Banksia roses; stained China tea cups and teabags drying on the sink for a second go.

Her house is rented out to a new family now. It will feel odd driving past. It was my reliable second home in a life of constant upheaval. I used to know where the key was hidden. Now it’s hidden in my heart.