Hilda we hardly knew you

This is me with my maternal grandmother Hilda. I only met her about three times and I have only three photos of her. I’ve been researching her, and in a way I know quite a lot about her. I know when and where she was born and died, who her parents and siblings were, who she married and what they called their children, where she was living when the census and the electoral registers were compiled.
 
But really I don’t know her at all. She lived through events that changed the world – two world wars, the cold war, the Spanish flu, the fall of the Berlin wall, votes for women – and I don’t know what she thought about them or how they affected her. I don’t know why she made the choices she did, or what mattered to her.
 
As every family historian says, I wish I had asked more questions, and I wish I had listened more carefully.