While I'm heartbroken at this loss, I'm trying to focus on the fact that she's finally at peace and no longer in pain.
As she often told us, she lived a long and fulfilling life - she would have turned ninety-two next week.
She was born, the second of eight children in a tiny two bedroom terrace in Morley in 1923 to a Yorkshire miner and a Scottish housemaid.
She got away from working in the mill by joining the army at the age of seventeen. She travelled the country and lived it up in Bristol, attending lots of dances with soldiers from America and France.
After the war she married, left her husband and ran away to London for six months. She moved back to Leeds where she met and married my grandfather, leading to the birth of my mother some years later.
They moved around a lot including a stint in Blackpool before moving back to Leeds for family. Sadly, grandad died when mum was just a teenager.
Grandma met her third husband Ken shortly before I was born and married him soon after my sister was born. They often looked after us and took us all over in school holidays. They also enjoyed lots of holidays in Jersey.
Ken passed away in 1999. Four years later, she was diagnosed with cancer. At age eighty, we all feared the worst but she fought it and won, albeit with lots of support from friends and family.
She applied for her first passport at eighty-two to visit me in Barcelona for my twenty-first. She got on swimmingly with tapas, sangria and Spanish waiters. When I came back from Spain, I moved in with her. We had our rows but at heart we were the best of friends. She helped me learn my panto lines and I helped her finish crosswords. Despite the age gap, we had lots in common.
When I moved to Germany and met Nico she took to him too. She visited us three times here and danced into the night at our wedding.
She became a great grandmother in 2010 and now has a grand total of five great grandchildren including twins (which four of her siblings were).
She struggled with dementia in later life but always retained her fighting spirit and cheeky temperament. After a fall in August, she never fully recovered.
She could make friends anywhere - even the hospital nurses came to visit her in their own time when she moved hospitals.
Even having read about her eventful life, I can't give you more than a glimpse of the kind of woman she was. She supported us all through everything. She had a big heart but she told it straight.
I know she was proud of us and I know she's still with us in so many ways. I hope to honour her by living a good life and keeping her memory alive.
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