Can we do it all again?

What do you do when it's all done?
What do you do when there nothing left to organise, or plan?
When they have been commemorated or celebrated and cremated and then...
What's left?
When you're not building up to the funeral of someone you love, and worrying about whether it's going to be done right. 

Then what do you focus on?

Suddenly you're back in the real world: the world you rediscover the day after they die, because the day they die the world stops.
But the world keeps on spinning as if they never left and the next day you find it's business as usual, except you have an event to organise. 

And when the date comes and goes, and the event is over, then the really real world comes back. 
And it's actually business as usual.
And suddenly business as usual seems so fruitless and pointless and you're inconsolable and inconsolably angry for no reason and you're feel like you're stuck in a dead end which wasn't signposted as a dead end so surely there's another way out.
But you can't find it. You don't find it. Things are "normal" but they're not.

You're so irreparably changed that suddenly you can't stop thinking about the next one. 
Wondering who will be next and how that event will go and how they would want it.
And whether you'll do them proud.
As if they could ever be proud of you for accurately planning and executing their funeral.
As if your choice of flowers, or words, or music, affects how they feel about you.
It doesn't: it's all for you, about them. 
It's not about doing them "justice". 
It's not about saying goodbye to them in the appropriate manner.
It's about doing whatever you need to do, to say what needs to be said or what you want to say.
It's about realising that life is short, even if it's 80 years long, and if you don't say it now it may remain forever unsaid or unheard. 
And if it is too late for them to hear, saying it anyway, to people that will hear and will listen and will understand. 
Because then you've heard it said aloud. And you know it to be true. 
And since anyone so loved is gone but not forgotten, you have still said it to them, and they have still heard. 
They hear you because they still live in you. When you breathe, laugh, smile. Cry. 

They are a part of you in a way you cannot alter.
They always will be.

I love you, tomorrow/You're only a day away

I feel I want to fold in on myself. 
Fold myself up until I'm small enough to slip into someone's pocket.
And stay there, warm and safe. In the dark, with only a crumpled receipt and some spare change to keep me company.

Unless, of course, the pocket has a hole in it.
If that is the case, I might think I'm safe and warm in the pocket, and once my eyes have adjusted to the gloom, I'll go exploring.

And that's when the floor will give way and I'll fall through it, and be trapped in the lining with no way out.
Unlike the pocket, the lining isn't comforting.
The lining is that feeling when you're in a maze, and you're actually trying to find the middle, or the way out, without cheating, but you can't and you're trapped and you start to wonder if this is where you'll be for the rest of your life. If you'll ever see the outside world again.

Like the hole that you might disappear into, when someone you love dies it leaves a hole in your life.
A rip in the fabric of space, and time.
A rip in the fabric of you.
Suddenly, you are the pocket, and the hole is where your granddad used to be. And whenever you go anywhere near it you get the sense of emptiness, of a never-ending gloom. 

Tomorrow is going to be awful. There are no two ways about it. I am going to be crying or on the verge of tears from the moment I wake up. There'll be moments throughout the day when I think that maybe the tears have dried up, and then they'll spring afresh in the wells of my eyes and come streaming down my face and it'll be all I can manage not to let out a heaving sob.

I want to fold in on myself. I want to save the memories of my granddad that are inside me and if I fold myself up and shut down from the outside world they will be safe. And warm. Protected inside. 

I don't want to lose them like we've lost him. Because now the memories I keep of him only live in my head. They are gone from his. 
He is gone.

When he was in the care home, he said, "I'm ready to die tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes."

Tomorrow came for him, and now tomorrow comes for us.

Memories Follow You Around

I thought I saw my granddad driving through Carshalton High Street today.

Of course it wasn't, and the random man was probably mildly disturbed by the woman staring at him.

This is not my first great loss, but it feels like it. Both my dad's parents have passed away, but although I liked them and had a decent relationship with them, it was nothing like the one I had with my granddad. That's why it feels like my first great loss.

But whilst I had a really big cry after losing each of my other grandparents, since my granddad passed away I haven't had a really big cry. Perhaps because I had a really big cry before. And perhaps because I cried a lot when we were there for his final moments.

I cry little and often.

I have been struggling to get to sleep since he passed away, and there are myriad of reasons for this. My mind races when I try to lie down and go to sleep because I know that if I'm thinking, I'm living.
Because there's so much I want to do with my life, and lying there, going to sleep again, I worry that I won't be able to do it all.
And as my breathing quietens and slows, it reminds me of the way his noisy, chesty breathing started slowing, and quietened. Until it stopped.


He could be harsh, and strict. He hated people crying, at least when I was younger. He was intolerant of foreigners and same sex relationships.
But he was always the granddad with the silly jokes, that my sister and I rode like a horsey when we were kids. No wonder he had two knee operations!
And boy did he make a mean Chinese. Boxing Day was never the same again after he stopped doing it.


It doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like he's gone for good, just that he's not here. We're planning a funeral for a man that I saw die and yet he doesn't feel dead to me.

The old cliche of "he'll always be alive in our hearts" is true.
I can only be grateful that I was with him at the end, that he knew he was loved, and I will be eternally grateful for having had him as my granddad.

All Men Must Die

He is going to die soon. It could be this week, or next week, or the week after. But it is going to be soon.

It is going to be before any of us are ready, because no one can ever be ready for this.

I have never seen cancer up close before. I hope I never have to again. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't share this, that this is something to be kept private, these last moments with my grandfather. But I find it hard to talk to individuals about this. It's easier sending it into the ether. 

All men must die. But if this is dying, it is ugly and messy and distressing. 

It is not how I imagined death: a calm cold, quiet that gradually falls upon you. This is an upsetting fading. This is my grandad only being my grandad for an hour a day, and being a vacant, elderly man who mumbles and mutters and groans for the rest of it. A man who asks for a piece of the mountain in the picture on the wall, and accepts a bottle top the same colour as the mountain. 

Today I told him we love him. And he said he loves us too. 

But even men who love and are loved must die.