The Last Time I Saw my Grandad

If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?

** Trigger Warning**

A day I would love to do over again. Though it wasn’t an answer I expected. I was ready to wrestle with 69 years of memories, sifting carefully, weighing the Pros and Cons. Instead as soon as I wondered about a title it was there. The only answer.

One more day with him. Maybe I could remember it all more clearly, have a bit more to treasure.

Anyone who lost someone very young, but old enough to remember losing them, will tell you that you land up hanging onto disconnected moments.

The day he was trying to get me to take an afternoon nap and I kept giggling and tickling.

The day I was rude to my nan and he took me on. You might think I wouldn’t want to remember that one, but any memory is precious, anything at all. Plus I learned something important that I’ve never forgotten and never repeated.

Nan knitting him a multi-coloured zip up cardigan. I asked what made all the coloured spots. She said her cigarette ash dropping on the wool. I believed her absolutely. 🙄

A journey in the back of a van one Christmas going down to my aunt’s on the South Coast. Grandad sat in the little armchair that was my Christmas present. He was that tiny.

Playing in the garden with him. That’s not a clear memory but there are photos. I have a vague recollection.

My mum and nan asking me to eat some soup with grandad, because he was so ill, but they knew he would try for me.

The day he died. The day my world fell apart. I was 6. He was only 58. My aunt arrived in a taxi with my Nan. Mum had just washed her hair and it was wringing wet. You did not go out in October weather with wet hair. She did. I knew absolutely that he was going to leave me.

I was taken to an aunt’s who took great care of me. My parents came in, mum came towards me and said “Granddad’s gone to heaven to live with God”. A feeling hit me then and it’s still there as I write this. Just as raw 63 years later, even though in reality it’s probably softened with time.

What worried my parents at the time was that I went silent. All I ever said (once) was that I wanted my granddad. One day my mum took me aside in the park, bent down to me and gently said “If you want to cry about grandad that’s okay, it’s just us.”

I tore myself away from her and ran like the hounds of hell were nipping at my ankles. I was terrified I had to get away.

I questioned whether I wrote all this, I don’t like bringing the mood down, I exist to amuse. Yet in writing it I’ve clarified something. I never reacted, which is why writing this is hurting like it was yesterday, not 1963.

That’s something for us all to think about, the eternal effect of unresolved grief. Maybe something to be dealt with?

I’ll leave you with a related story that I promise you is true.

Breaking the grim

About a year after he died I had a dream. I was lying in my bed in our new house and I heard a knock at the window. A window that didn’t open.

Outside there was a small cloud with an angel on it, complete with a small harp as cherubim’s are often shown. He told me to join him on the cloud and he would take me to see my grandad.

He put his hand out, I took it, floated out the window and we rose up on the cloud until we saw another much bigger cloud. All that was on it was two golden gates. Closed.

Grandad approached from the other side, holding the hand of a blonde boy I didn’t know.

He was in a brown raincoat belted at the waist, wore a school cap, and his short trousers were knee length. He had on very thick gray socks, and big clumpy brown shoes.

I asked granddad if I could go in to see him, he said no not for a long time. He asked me to tell mummy and nanny that he was okay and well again. And I woke up.

I was out of bed tearing through the house in seconds. “Mummy, mummy I’ve seen grandad and he’s very well and I have to tell nanny!”

Mum got hold of me and said tell me about it. So I told her. When I said “And he had the little boy with him” the air froze.

Mum just said let’s go and see nanny. I was off. I told her everything and she said to mum “have you still got it?” Mum said yes in the top of her wardrobe.

We went back to her room and she took out a framed picture and showed me. “Is this the little boy?” I said yes and described how he was dressed.

I’ll never forget the look they gave to each other. My uncle had died aged 4 in 1942, a hidden victim of the war, an infection that could have been cured but all the penicillin was at the front for the troops. My grandfather was away working for the war effort, he wasn’t fit enough to sign up. He couldn’t get back in time.

He tried to visit Uncle Vic’s grave, got to the cemetery, alighted from the bus, crossed the road and came home. He told the family to put all the pictures away, and never to mention Vic again, he simply could not bear it. So there was just no way I knew anything about him.

I’d have been on my grandad’s lap demanding to know everything about Vic, the moment I saw him. Perhaps that would have been a good thing, unresolved grief and all that. Both of us wouldn’t talk about it. But I have a photo of my grandad to this day! Nan gave it to me and I treasure it.

Sorry this isn’t a happy cheery blog. But you know sometimes we have to share the pain and heartbreak to make it okay for someone else to do the same. Maybe this has helped someone, or let them know that they’re not the only one who still feels agony decades later. We’re not alone, there’s always someone out there who can say “I know, and mean it”.

Best love

Amorah – Deb