My cousin, Lois and I shared grandparents who were both born in the mid nineteenth century. Lois, who was around 25 years older than my sister, Charmian and me, was the last link we had with the inherited, shared family memories of that time, which were still alive in the minds of our elders throughout our childhoods. When I spoke to Lois shortly after her 100th. birthday, she was able to tell me about our grandmother who had died before I was born. We discovered that, as a child, she had played hide and seek underneath the massive Victorian sideboard my father had inherited and which had, for us too, served as an exciting den and hiding place. Our lives and our paths had seldom crossed, over the years, but it was so good to talk to her, despite her great age and discover a shared humour; and to recognise in her tones a distinctive style of speech, so reminiscent of her mother, my aunt, and all the other aunts, now long gone. I’m very grateful to have got to know better such a very special person as Lois, albeit so late in our lives. She was one who seemed to bear all the richly gracious fruit of a long life, well lived until the very end. Her humour, her dignity and her refinement remained clear and unimpaired as an inspiration to others. I feel she must, over the years, have been a blessing, in different ways, to many people who knew and loved her. May she rest in peace.