Dear One's grandfather recently died. He had a massive heart
attack, died, was brought back, and eventually died again. So now
he is gone.
It's always a strange feeling to know that you will never talk to
someone again, or accidentally bump into them at the shops.
Seeing a person in the crowd and thinking "I wonder if that's them?",
followed by the realisation that it couldn't possibly be.
We grow up with television and film, in which people stay their same
age for ever. Some, the lucky ones, keep working as they get
older, so we see them age. It is possible to believe they have
grown and maybe passed on, but others stop (or are stopped) long before
their looks have shifted from youthful sexiness to aged wisdom.
So we watch them again and again and have to remind ourselves that they
have gone.
So when reality breaks into things, when we discover that people don't
live forever, that they go away and don't come back, it's always
strange. Well, it is for me, anyway. I'm sure some people
have no problem with death. People die. It's a fact of
life. Some people actually believe this. They might have
lost so many, that one more is nothing. Or they might be so
stable that reality does not pose the problem for them that it often
does for me.
We all grow. We all age. We, as a society, try damn hard to
cover up the effects of time, we try to maintain the glow of youth long
after it had obviously gone. Death, a constant reminder of what
aging brings, is hidden away and shunned.
I have had very few people die in my life. Some friends from
school, who I had long since lost contact with, have died. My
grandparents died in the last decade. I wonder if it gets easier,
or maybe it gets harder.
A friend of mine had his youngest son die. It has often been said
that a parent should never have to bury their child. I think this
is so true.
Which, of course, brings the flip side. Life. We all have
one (even those of us constantly told to get one), and we should
cherish it. Age is the price we pay for getting to see things
change. We get older, but so do our children. So, while we
only have a limited time on this world, we are given so much during
that time. Yes, it all ends. One day we will all discover
it is our last. I hope when that day comes I will be able to look
back and think: Yes, that was good. I know I do now. Never
regret. You can't turn around and go back, so don't worry about
what happened. Learn form it. Repair it if you can.
Move on if you can't.
Goodbye Grandpa.
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