Gramps
Originally posted @ http://scruffy-duck.net
This is my grandad dancing at my 18th birthday party. This was probably when our relationship was at it’s best, so it felt apt to use this picture.
He died on Tuesday age 88, so any other post I was going to make seemed to be unimportant compared to that fact.
He’s been dying for a few weeks now, the end result of his dementia, his muscles gave up on him. So it’s not really a shock. A bit of a surprise that he died on the 13th of the month, like my nan, but it was coming. And he hasn’t been my gramps for a long time. He hasn’t recognised me for years, which was just as heartbreaking as him dying is. The finality of his death is what gets me the most I suppose, when he had dementia, he was alive, and there is always this childlike hope that maybe one day he’d wake up and ask for his coffee to be stirred clockwise.
He used to do stuff like that, as a joke, just to be awkward. Stir it clockwise, not anti-clockwise. He was an awkward stubborn old man a lot of the time, and I always figured he’d outlive us all. He could be quite particular about things, he had his own biscuits. They were in the biscuit barrel with all the other biscuits, but they were his biscuits and he would know if you had taken one. Even just one. Which didn’t always mean you were in trouble, sometimes I think he just wanted you to know, he knew.
He didn’t drive. When my dad was a kid, he was cleaning the glass panes in the doors that separated the dining room from the living room, when he put his hand through it, severing his hand. Well almost severing his hand. My dad’s version of the story goes that it was hanging off by a vein or something like that. They saved the hand, sowed it back on, but he didn’t have any feeling in it and it shook a lot. This reflected in his handwriting and I always assume it was the reason he didn’t drive. It did mean that when he grabbed you, or took your hand, he didn’t know how hard he was holding onto you, so you had to tell him if he was hurting you. He’d always let go. Or me at least.
Not driving meant he rode this brown push bike that looked horribly rickety. Especially when he was on it. But from what I know he never fell off, and it never suddenly broke beneath him on the way to Tesco, and he rode that thing for years. He would go to Tesco two or three times a day. For bread, milk, sherry, whatever. Sometimes he’d say he was going to get some bread and take three hours. I have no idea what he would do, neither would my nan or dad, he was his own man. He liked to play bowls down the community centre and garden, but other than that I don’t know what else he would get up to. He would talk to anyone. Except my dad and nan. Those bridges were broken when I was a kid.
When I was a teenager I didn’t sleep much, less so at my dad’s house, and when I was older I would stay up late writing and watching tv. My gramps would go to bed early, but get up around midnight unable to sleep, and come down stairs for a cup of tea. We would sit up together, sometimes he would watch tv with me and we’d talk and he would tell me things. About his parents, about him. I wish I could remember more. I wish I had paid more attention. But at 17 you don’t know how important this is going to be to you a decade later.
I could go on, but I won’t. Because it’s upsetting more than anything else.
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This is my grandad dancing at my 18th birthday party. This was probably when our relationship was at it’s best, so it felt apt to use this picture.
He died on Tuesday age 88, so any other post I was going to make seemed to be unimportant compared to that fact.
He’s been dying for a few weeks now, the end result of his dementia, his muscles gave up on him. So it’s not really a shock. A bit of a surprise that he died on the 13th of the month, like my nan, but it was coming. And he hasn’t been my gramps for a long time. He hasn’t recognised me for years, which was just as heartbreaking as him dying is. The finality of his death is what gets me the most I suppose, when he had dementia, he was alive, and there is always this childlike hope that maybe one day he’d wake up and ask for his coffee to be stirred clockwise.
He used to do stuff like that, as a joke, just to be awkward. Stir it clockwise, not anti-clockwise. He was an awkward stubborn old man a lot of the time, and I always figured he’d outlive us all. He could be quite particular about things, he had his own biscuits. They were in the biscuit barrel with all the other biscuits, but they were his biscuits and he would know if you had taken one. Even just one. Which didn’t always mean you were in trouble, sometimes I think he just wanted you to know, he knew.
He didn’t drive. When my dad was a kid, he was cleaning the glass panes in the doors that separated the dining room from the living room, when he put his hand through it, severing his hand. Well almost severing his hand. My dad’s version of the story goes that it was hanging off by a vein or something like that. They saved the hand, sowed it back on, but he didn’t have any feeling in it and it shook a lot. This reflected in his handwriting and I always assume it was the reason he didn’t drive. It did mean that when he grabbed you, or took your hand, he didn’t know how hard he was holding onto you, so you had to tell him if he was hurting you. He’d always let go. Or me at least.
Not driving meant he rode this brown push bike that looked horribly rickety. Especially when he was on it. But from what I know he never fell off, and it never suddenly broke beneath him on the way to Tesco, and he rode that thing for years. He would go to Tesco two or three times a day. For bread, milk, sherry, whatever. Sometimes he’d say he was going to get some bread and take three hours. I have no idea what he would do, neither would my nan or dad, he was his own man. He liked to play bowls down the community centre and garden, but other than that I don’t know what else he would get up to. He would talk to anyone. Except my dad and nan. Those bridges were broken when I was a kid.
When I was a teenager I didn’t sleep much, less so at my dad’s house, and when I was older I would stay up late writing and watching tv. My gramps would go to bed early, but get up around midnight unable to sleep, and come down stairs for a cup of tea. We would sit up together, sometimes he would watch tv with me and we’d talk and he would tell me things. About his parents, about him. I wish I could remember more. I wish I had paid more attention. But at 17 you don’t know how important this is going to be to you a decade later.
I could go on, but I won’t. Because it’s upsetting more than anything else.
Share|