Saying goodbye

I said goodbye to my grandfather last Sunday. He was 93 and pretty frail. My sister rang me while we were cooking for guests, last Saturday, to say that he had become very ill and had stopped eating and drinking. So Andy and I drove down to Milton Keynes to see him on Sunday.

If I'm honest, I went because it felt like the right thing to do, rather than because I expected either myself or my grandad to get anything out of my being there. Particularly as my sister said we might not recognise him and he might not recognise us. I wasn't even convinced he was necessarily very close to death. Some of my work over the years has been with very old people and there have been plenty of times when people who were apparently about to die, were still there weeks later.

I can honestly say I have never been more glad to see someone than when I saw my grandfather last Sunday. I'm not sure whether he recognised me. He definitely knew we were there some of the time and he smiled at me several times. But I recognised him. And remembered how special he'd been to me. And how fond I was of him, particularly as a child.

A strange and poignant meeting.

Grandad died at ten past seven on Monday morning.

To my deep sadness, his funeral is a week on Monday, which is the first day of our adoption preparation course. So realistically, we won't be able to go. So last Sunday really was goodbye.