Looking Back and Making Memories

For the past couple of weeks, I have been in contact with a close friend whose grandfather is passing away and has recently moved into a hospice. It’s the first time she has experienced anything like this so I’m checking to see that she’s ok. We have been exchanging regular texts, but it was one in particular that she sent that got me thinking.

"I don’t know how people deal with death, it’s bizarre to think that life just continues on”

I was incredibly close to my grandad and loved him dearly. I spent a week with him during the last two summers before he died. He was a huge influence on my life and his presence is still felt whenever I get together with my brothers, both in our humour and in the way we look at the world. When I cried at his funeral, it was the first time I cried in public.

In 2004 I bought an old MGB and I still have it to this day. My dad saw it for the first time when he visited at Christmas that year. “I bet that goes doesn’t it?” he said, as he walked past it on the way to his car to drive off. “Yeah it’s not bad” I replied, “I’ll bring it up one day.” Before I knew it though Easter had arrived and then it was May. I knew I had to organise a weekend to go up and see him, if only I could get around to organising a time. Then, on the Tuesday morning after the May bank holiday, the phone rang. It was my older brother and I was still in bed when I answered. “I’ve had a call from M, the old man died last night.” He said to take some time and to call him back. I ended the call. “What’s the matter?” said my girlfriend at the time. “My Dad’s dead” I replied, my bottom lip trembling and my eyes filling with tears.

I took some time off work, before going back 4 days later. On the first day back, I was due to attend a meeting in Birmingham of all places – as if I wasn’t depressed enough. As I sat at the conference table, my mind was anywhere but in the meeting. I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t think of anything but Dad. What made it worse was that just about everyone looked at me and gave me a sympathetic “hope you’re ok” nod. All this did though was to make the golf ball sized lump in my throat swell to that of a tennis ball. I could feel my eyes, hot and damp ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it’ I thought to myself, ‘Hold it together, please don’t cry here, not in front of everyone’. I managed to get through the meeting and I caught the train back to London with a colleague. I was hoping to God that he wouldn’t ask me how I was. I didn’t want to talk about my Dad. The lump in my throat was still there and I was amazed that I’d been able to hold it as long as I had. “So mate, do you want to hear about the fit Aussie bird that I shagged on Saturday?” It was the first time I’d smiled all week. “YES!” I shouted with relief “tell me everything!!”

I went into pragmatic mode as I organised the funeral. This was itself an entertainment with it’s own comedy value. My parents were divorced and he’d been living up in the Midlands, and so we weren’t entirely sure where to bury him. He spent some happy childhood years with an Aunt in Derbyshire during the war and she had passed away only a couple of years previously. Should we bury him with her, in the same grave? Was that something he’d have wanted? I spoke to the local vicar who said, “You need to speak with Dave the gravedigger”. The next day I received a call “Hi, it’s Dave the gravedigger.” He sounded for all the world, like an east end builder looking for someone to haggle with over the price of a loft conversion. “Yeah, you can get him in there” he said, before following up with “depends how legal you want to be though.” Apparently, the necessary depth between the top of the coffin and the ground would be one inch too short. In the end, we brought him back down to Hertfordshire and he is now buried in a churchyard close to the family.

There are things I regret – conversations I wish we’d had, journeys to see him that I didn’t take and goodbyes that I wished I had been able to make – but didn’t have the chance, as he went so suddenly. But there were three things that helped me through it all. Firstly, there was the practicality of organising the funeral. Finding somewhere for him to be buried, organising flowers, deciding what sort of wood we wanted for the coffin etc – you just didn’t have time to get sad. Secondly, was the support of a loving family and my former partner. Any time I had a ‘moment’, she’d give me a hug and I’d be fine. Thirdly, I’d talk to my Dad. I thought of the things that I’d wanted to say to him and then I said them. I’d imagine that he was standing next to me – in the car park whilst I was buying a ticket, in the supermarket as I was finding a trolley, or in the petrol station as I was filling up. I’d talk to him and say what I wanted to say. Looking back on it, I must have resembled the sort of nutter that you avoid on the tube, but it helped. It still does and I talk to him at his graveside when I visit the churchyard. In some ways I talk to him more now than I did when he was here – at least I always win the argument now.

It’s this that I want to say to my friend. I would give anything to have just 5 minutes with Dad and Grandad – to tell them I loved them and to be able to say all the things that I wanted to say. And I want to remind her – to remind myself for that matter, that whilst the people we love are still with us, that we are still making memories and not just looking back on them.