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. 

Not Yet

I never knew watching someone die would be so tiring. 

Being on alert for their mutterings and mumblings, to respond to their half-crazed conversation. 

My grandad used to read my blog. Once I think he even sent the link to The Telegraph because he thought it should be published. 

I have many and more memories of my grandad. He was a lot of fun when we were kids, but he was strict too. He couldn't abide crying. But he mellowed with age, and in the past two months I've seen him cry more than I ever did the previous 25 years of my life. I'd cry too, if I was given a death sentence.

But this is my grandad now, in his final days. This elderly man who talks to people only he can see about things that aren't happening. This man who looks at me, but doesn't see me. Who tells me I'm lying about who I am, but calls out for me when he's distressed. 

This man who tries to call people on his catheter, and needs new boots to see the captain tomorrow. This man who has been husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle. This man so well loved, will be so sorely missed. 

But not yet.

It's Been A While

I haven't written in this blog for a while. A whole month in fact. Sometimes, a week won't go by that I don't have some thought I want to put down in here. But my Head Aches blog/vlog has been taking priority.

I want to explore that concept of priority. It's hard to know what are your priorities, and the difference between what they are and what they should be. Most of us feel strong obligations to one thing or another: work, family, money. My strongest obligation at the moment is family, particularly my grandparents. With my grandad now in a care home, I need to be around to go and see him, and also to take my nan to see him on occasion. My sister only gets the opportunity to see them at the weekends, and if I was working full-time I would be in the same position. 

I'm struggling with not working. The thing is I'm not not working, I'm just not in my usual environment of a full-time 9-7/8/9 job in TV. I'm having to work off my own initiative to work for my friend on her business, on a film project. I have to sit myself down and say "Right, today I need to get this done" or "Ok this afternoon I'm going to get that finished."  It's not easy, and the house can be full of distractions like the washing up or the hoovering. Often I go and sit in my local library to be free of distraction. But I am going to have to learn how to work from home.

Much as I miss working in TV, and I miss the money, I want to be volunteering like I do each week - something that working in TV would not allow. I want to be around for my grandparents, because we don't know how long my grandad has got, and my nana is now alone in her house. For a woman that does not want to make her own family, I am curiously devoted to the one I already have.

When I got home in May, I felt like I'd made the wrong decision coming home, and my plan was to get back to work and save up enough to get away and out of the country again to somewhere else by the New Year. And then my mother told me my grandad had cancer. Lots of cancer. Cancer that will kill him (though won't technically won't kill him). Terminal, aggressive, untreatable cancer. They started chemo in order to give him more time. But only a few sessions in they said it was too aggressive and chemo would make no difference.
There was no more bargaining for time. This is it. 

And so he sits in his care home, in pain, uncomfortable, but being given more care and attention than we could if he were at home. He says he's ready to die tomorrow, but tomorrow doesn't come.

But I'm not ready.

Having a family is so selfish. You create people who are bound to you by blood and more often than not care about you like no other in the world. And sometimes your kids die before you and that's tragic, no parent should have to bury their child. But why should the children have to bury the parents? Is it part of growing up? An inevitable part of the human experience - the loss of a loved one. An experience that cannot be ignored, that cannot be got around. Unless you are an orphan hermit perhaps.

And I can easily empathise with people, fictional or otherwise. Watching the beginning of season 7 of Castle I was crying even though I knew what was going to happen. But the heartbreak of Beckett's face - it cut through to my own heart.

I'm not ready for this loss. How can I possibly become ready?