Letters to the dead.

Dear Grandad, 

I read some articles in a magazine and thought of you – the same way that you would read newspaper articles, think of me, and have them folded on the side ready for my Saturday visit. They made me realise that I’m still holding on to this feeling that in the midst of all those ‘thanks’ you gave to me in the last few years, maybe I didn’t make mine clear enough to you.  I didn’t thank you for the most important thing. Being you. 

You’d shrug it off, you’d make a joke, but I think you’d be quietly pleased.We lost you in October.  I can’t thank you for that.  I acknowledge that you might have been thankful for it at the end, but that’s for your letter of thanks – this is mine.You thought you were a nuisance.  You thought you were the kind of hassle we didn’t need.  Never. Oh, you could be hard work.  I’d never deny that.  I’d have a hard job of denying that. But you were worth every car journey and every minute and hour we gave to you, for you.  You were Grandad.  But it’s more than that.

You were the person that taught me that love can be that quiet thing that just hangs around in the background until you need it.  You were the person that showed me that love is still love, and still means the earth, when the object of that love is lost to dementia.  Watching you quietly, ever so patiently, sit there and still love Grandma, unequivocally, no matter what dementia made her resort to, showed me that love doesn’t have to change when people change, when situations change.  Love is that moment you treasure, that connection you had, and it is still golden long after the years and the trauma’s have tarnished it.  Underneath, it is still gold.  It was you, and I think that’s probably a surprise for both of us, that taught me about real love.  Not the pretty love, not the sexy love, and not the fairy tale love.  The love, love.  The day to day, putting up with the pain, willing to fight for it, love.  The mostly patient and accepting love that steps up whenever it’s needed. 

Never a man of many words, but always a man of those little two or three line poems in birthday cards.  The Man with the rubbish jokes.  The man with the tales about life before I was born, the ones that were very often on repeat.  Even the criticisms of my hair cuts…  I loved them because they were you and they said that you cared.  But the day I read the card you had them write for Grandma’s funeral taught me that you were the man of the right words and just how strong love could be.  “E, Just an aching void, A."

It still gets me in the stomach, the throat and the tear ducts.  Straight to the point and quietly powerful - so very you. 

So this letter is for the words I can never be sure you heard because I only got to say them whilst you were sleeping - and they’d removed the hearing aid by that point.  

Grandad, Thank you for being you and thank you for loving me.  You were loved and you were always worth it.