Why My Grandfather's Death Killed Me...

I was always very close to my grandfather. My parents had a turbulent marriage, so when I was younger, aged 5, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents, so that my own parents could sort things out.

We would run every errand together. I would sit and watch him shave his beard with old fashioned tools in the garden. We would often have breakfast in there too.

When the sun would come up and the summers got hotter, gradually we’d spend more time in his sitting room. He took the opportunity to teach me German.

After a four year tenure full of hugs and sunshine and rainbows and all the good things in life - my parents took me back home. They had worked on their marriage and had news to give me - I was about to become a big sister. 

Being a big sister was fun, at first. I had the cutest younger brother. Fat and chunky, he was pure adorable. But my parents focused a lot of their attention onto him. 

In hindsight, yes he was a newborn, but this went on for much longer. Slowly I felt like more and more of a stranger in my own home. To see this child enjoy the attention and love and care of my parents - the same parents who let the responsibility of raising their first child fall on their elderly parents.

To a 13 year old me, it felt a lot like I was the ‘trial’ child. They had me, initially didn’t know what to do. Freestyled it for three years, packed me up and shipped me off to a different country whilst they ‘figured themselves out’. And my baby brother was the gem, the child they actually were capable of raising on their own. 

Yes, I’d greatly enjoyed being raised by my grandparents. But what my parents did to me was cruel and unfair. Moving me back home after those six years abroad with my grandparents meant I was more fluent in German, had a lower command of English, and I spoke with an accent. 

Classmates bullied me, I was the only one with accented English in the class. I missed my grandparents at every passing turn, but couldn’t visit them out of term-time. And they were too old to travel.

I resorted to writing my grandfather letters. He wasn’t apt with Skype or FaceTime or anything that required technology, despite his high intellect he was a traditional old fashioned man at heart. We would have a witty back and forth, he would ask for updates on how everything was going. Always refer to me as his dear and darling Gigi. Always sign his letters with: Forever your loving grandfather. 

I’d tell him all about what I was up to, share my constantly changing career plans with him. He’d applaud me on my writing, but always tell me to keep this hobby going. 

His writing was so perfect. So cursive and elegant. 

It went on like this for the next few years. I was in Year 11 by now, and I knew what I had to do. I told my parents I would live with my grandparents after exams. They agreed - with their hands as ever full with my younger brother, the easier option was to free me.

But luck has never been on my side, because COVID began to spread. This really worried me. Because he was old and from what the news was telling me - old people were more likely to die from this than young. 

Along with COVID came the travel ban. Lockdowns, quarantines.

That year exams got cancelled. Mine were, too. 

It became important to my mother too that we visit her parents, because as soon as restrictions were lifted, she booked tickets for the October half term. In 2021. 

It was the best week of my life. Seeing my grandfather after so many years. He was much older now, it hurts me to admit, but his gorgeous blue eyes still shone like diamonds. And that was enough for me, it was sufficient for me that he was alive and healthy. 

I took it for granted. That trip I imagined how long he would be in my life. And my mind said forever, not realising that wasn’t a possibility. 

I thought, well at least until I’m married and have my own kids and I’m super old.  I suppose even the idea of him ever leaving was impossible.

Because in life, when you have something pure and beautiful, it is taken for granted. Only when you lose it do you realise what you had.

Fate wasn’t in my favour. Because one night, at the end of our trip, my grandfather fell ill. He grasped at his chest and struggled to breathe. He’d fallen down in his garden on his morning walk. 

It was a brain stroke. He remained in the ICU for a few hours. The world felt like it had ripped. Doomsday had begun. 

Countless tears and prayers and hours later the doctor solemnly informed us my grandfather was no more. 

My grandfather was dead. 

Grief came rushing through, in buckets and buckets of tears on my already tear-stained face. 

But with that information came shock. It couldn’t simply possibly be. My grandfather was right here - on his arm chair. His favourite show is just about to start - he can’t be dead - if he misses it it’ll be the first time in forever he does. 

He can’t be dead yet because he hasn’t seen me sit my A-levels and start university yet. 

I’m not even 18 yet so how can my grandfather be dead? 

The night after my grandfather died was a quiet one. Painful in that everything felt numb. Grief echoed from every corner of his house. 

His specs lay on his bedside table on his dresser, an open file of an ongoing case. His study had half-written case notes, pen neat in its holder. 

All signs pointed to a life that would continue. 

In the kitchen, his favourite coffee mug, still with his touch on it.

His coat was missing from its hanger, he was wearing it when he...and it wasn't even his favourite.

The house was heartburstingly full of people, yet it was still unbearably empty. All these faces, heads with crescent-moons of silver hair, yet he was not here anymore...

Outside, daylight dawned as the Sun still came up. Cars still went by, the noisy street was the same, which would never let him rest, was still noisy.

People got in their cars and still went to work. This was just another normal day. 

How? How did everyone still live while I couldn't even breathe? Why was the world still spinning when mine just went six feet under? How can life continue if mine just ended?

And that’s what didn’t let me live. The injustice of it all. How people continued with their lives, like nothing had happened. While my world ripped off its axis. 

My solar system came crashing down and life as I knew it - as I’d always known it to be - had met a full stop. 

My social life withered and my grades dropped. 

My school’s half-arsed attempt at therapy further drew me into a newly made shell. 

Everything and anything was pointless and life was never going to be the same again. 

Little things made me cry. Smelling the cologne he wore, seeing elderly men with his half-crescent moon shape of silver hair. Anyone with blue eyes I couldn’t bear to look at. Because I knew no matter who it was they would never be him. No one could match his stunning irises. 

How do you get over the one person who held you when no one wanted to? When even your own parents couldn’t stand you, the man who taught you everything, how do you even begin to fathom his departure? You don’t.  

I moped and dragged myself through life, painfully waiting for it to end. Doing my best to put myself in harms way. Not looking before I crossed, leaving my coat at home in the rain, touching chemicals with my bare hands in the lab. 

It went on like this until I had a dream of my grandfather. I was a third person viewer in the dream, and I could hear my grandfather explaining the importance of moving on for him.  

He told me he was still there. He was rooting for my every success and that I needed to keep going. After all, I needed to make stories to tell him for when I met him right? 

That dream onwards I picked myself back up, threw myself into my studies and scraped As in my A-level examinations. 

I got into a good university and life became bearable for some time. 

I coudln't help but daydream of how life used to be. If I shut my eyes for long enough, I was in a frilly dress, running around in his garden again. I was watching him shave again, with those old-fashioned tools - the ones I was always scared he'd accidentally hurt himself with.

Oh how I wished I could be that careless and free again. I wanted to be a carefree, innocent, doe-eyed child again. Secure in the knowledge that my grandpa was here, and to never know what it feels like for him to not exist.

Daydreams end and reality startles you.

But the death of my grandfather never left me.

You see, the Gigi he knew died along with him.