(no subject)

[renfys]

  

My aunt found some more pictures of my grandparents.  These are my paternal grandparents. My nan drank a bottle of sherry a day. My gramps, my gramps was amazing. I still miss him, he died about 9 years ago and I think about him a lot.

Everyone called him Bill, even my nan. His name was not Bill. It was a Welsh thing, lots of the older generation around here go by middle or surnames.

We were close, he was my hero and defender. We were both insomniacs and would sit up at night drinking tea and talking. Sometimes he would do a crossword while I wrote. He told me about his parents, living in London between the Wars, his job. He was born outside Newport Wales, but lived his adult life in London then Coventry. he was a Royal Marine's Engineer but he never talked about the war. I know he was stationed in Orkney for a while but not much else. 

He was a good man, kind and generous. He would play the Irish Lottery and give me and my sister some of the winnings. Sometimes he would tell us to come upstairs and get a sweet as a pretext to give us a fiver without my dad or nanna knowing. 

He loved my mum a lot, and her sisters and talked to them long after my parents split up. He was more civil to my stepdad than my dad ever was. 

He had no feeling in his right hand after an accident cleaning the glass doors in the house. He shook a lot and when he died they thought he might have had undiagnosed Parkinsons all this time. He couldn't do little things like tie his shoelaces and I was always sad because in term time my sister and I weren't there to do that for him. I would rub Deep Heat into his back for him even though I am badly allergic to it. 

He had dementia for the last decade of his life, and lived in a home because my nanna and dad couldn't look after him. My nan was diabetic at this point and losing the feeling in her feet and my dad is an alcoholic epileptic with Parkinson's. They couldn't look after him but to my dad's credit, he did go and visit once a week at least. 

The last time I saw him, he recognised me and my sister but only intermittently. It was heartbreaking. I cried for the rest of the day. I still cry thinking about it.

My nan went to visit him once. He had been there for nine years and asked my dad one day to take her. A week later she slipped into a diabetic coma, had two strokes and passed away. It was a Friday. My gramps died six months later, also on a Friday. 

I wish he could've seen the person I've become. The things I've done. Wish he could meet my wife, they're very similar in ways, hard workers, same interests, kind and generous. He would've loved her. And I wish he could've met my kid. 

He was a good man and I miss him, terribly, still. And always will.