My 99-year-old cousin died and was buried last week in the rural town she knew as well as the lines on her own face.
Neither I nor my cousins can expect to live as long, or to weather quite as many disasters, human and otherwise, as she did. It was an inspiration to see her still standing upright under the blows life dealt her, bow-legged and determined, usually smiling, and still driving, until alarmingly recently, every day.
Moving and independence are probably vital underpinnings of anyone's life in an old age of any quality, and I doubt that many people have as much grit as she did. There was a way to sit in her car and drive, even if it involved carefully placed cushions, awkward movements, and tolerating pain.
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Driving with her opened up a past few people can remember, because she carried the map of the Wairarapa with her, every paddock, fence and tree, peopled with friends and family long dead, with roadside apple trees, sheepdogs, former homesteads, and with horse tracks now invisible to anyone's eye but hers.