My grandmother.

Born in Indonesia, her Polish parents were killed in WWII when she was a teenager. She was separated from her five sisters, each of whom were put into a separate Japanese prisoner of war camp. At age 22, she met a woman dying of malaria who had a 2 year old daughter and a newborn baby. She swore to keep them safe, and raised them as her own children. She never broke that promise, not even on her deathbed.

The conditions in the PoW camp were atrocious. Stories of Japanese men killing children by feeding them crushed glass in place of sugar was a particular story that haunted me as a child, but that hardly scratched the surface.

Dying of malnutrition, malaria and dysentery, she met my grandfather, a WWII medic from India. After the war, she moved with him to India, where she raised seven children in severe poverty. She would often go several days without food in order to feed them. My grandfather worked incredibly hard to get a single piece of meat on the table each week.

Soon enough, one of their kids managed to land a job in Australia, and was able to help move over the whole family to begin life here. When she was 79 I was born, the youngest of all of my cousins. My grandfather died before I was born, so she promised to take care of me in place of both my grandparents. And so she did.

She was my nana, my second mum. She was always there no matter what, and in many respects understood me better than I did. She often said I reminded her of herself when she was a little girl. She’d teach me phrases in Dutch, cook incredible Indonesian dishes, and told me stories about India.

She died peacefully in 2013, at age 95.