Stepping through the door of the neat, three-bedroom Hampshire house in 2019, Natalie Gordon was flooded with memories. She remembered the times she\u2019d sat chatting and drinking tea at the white Formica table and walking through the beautiful garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything reminded me of Pam and Ron,\u201d remembers Natalie. \u201cIt was sad to walk through these rooms and know that this wonderful couple were gone. And a shock to realise that they\u2019d left it all to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inheriting from a loved one often comes with complicated feelings<\/a>. Sadness at the loss, gratefulness at the gift and guilt that you\u2019ve been chosen. Natalie felt them all. But Natalie wasn\u2019t in Hampshire seven years ago sorting out the belongings left by a generous grandparent. The mother of two, then 46, had been left the \u00a3300,000 house and all its contents by an elderly couple she\u2019d befriended<\/a> as a teenager more than three decades earlier.<\/p>\n And the surprises weren\u2019t over. \u201cAs soon as I saw the two biscuit tins overflowing with letters, carefully stored away in the sideboard, I teared up. I remembered the many times I\u2019d seen the letters in Pam\u2019s hands, the solace they gave her after losing Ron.\u201d<\/p>\n Natalie had no idea that these letters would prove to be just as life-changing a bequest as the house they were in. A legacy that was hers because one day, decades earlier, she\u2019d smiled at two strangers.<\/p>\n Natalie was 14 and living in Guildford in 1987 when she made her usual 30-minute walk to secondary school. \u201cOne Thursday, I noticed a parked car with an older couple sitting quietly inside. As I walked past, I smiled, but they didn\u2019t respond. Finally, after four weeks they smiled back and introduced themselves as Pam and Ron. In the few minutes that we spoke, Ron explained that they drove the 30 minutes from their home every Thursday to Marks & Spencer\u2019s to do their food shop.\u201d<\/p>\n These chats became part of Natalie\u2019s Thursday routine and soon she was leaving home early to ensure she had time to stop and talk. The couple came to fill a very special place in Natalie\u2019s life. \u201cMy grandma Dora, who had Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a>, had come to live with us three years earlier. My growing friendship with Pam and Ron \u2013 also of an older generation \u2013 helped me as she declined.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stepping through the door of the neat, three-bedroom Hampshire house in 2019, Natalie Gordon was flooded with memories.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,8287,232941,263,232940,636,111,139,69,1177,25212,162728],"class_list":["post-458783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-friendship","tag-hampshire","tag-lifestyle","tag-love-amp-friendship","tag-marriage","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-standard","tag-top-story","tag-us-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}