I Wish I Could Wish My Grandad One More Happy Birthday

Today would have been my Grandad’s birthday.

He died 11 days after his birthday in 1990, just over a year before I gave birth to his first (and only) grandson.

Time does not heal, but it does blur the edges of the pain. Last month I reminisced about my grandad and it was like I’d sabotaged myself. I went back to those awful days of deep mourning and I could barely function – no exaggeration, I went back into deep grief.

My daughter said something a year or so after he died. She had a new baby brother on the way and a couple of times a week, she went to her grandmother’s house on the street where my grandad used to live.

She came home one day, telling me about a lovely old man she had been chatting to when her grandmother took her up to the shop.

My mother didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked her about the chat Dani had had.

Grandad didn’t believe in the afterlife, I know this because he told me. “Ghosts and spirits?” he said. “Nah, no such thing.”

I do know that if there was a way of getting back and making contact with his loved ones, he would certainly have done so. Maybe our children’s senses are attuned to the spirit world? Maybe spirits that have passed over are attracted to the vitality of children and can only communicate with those of us that have not lost our child-ness.

I know my daughter is an amazing woman. I also know that I never dismissed her stories as ‘rubbish’ or accused her of being a ‘drama queen’ like my parents did with me.

She had a few encounters if I think back. A ‘friend’ she used to talk to on the stairs of our home, the ‘lovely old man’ she chatted with on the way to the shop, the man that my mother didn’t see.

The most thought-provoking thing of all, is that all three of our new-borns, my daughter, my son and my granddaughter, ALL stared, fascinated at various corners of the living room, especially the one I’m sitting in now, writing. This is the place where I’ve done more writing than any other time in my career.

I finally found the place to sit and write… it’s taken thirty-odd years to do it.

Back to my Grandad.

As I said, he died before my son was born. We called our son Haydn because it’s a derivative of Harold, my Grandad’s name.

I wanted to further his memory and though my son never met him, he is SO like him, in so many ways.

Twelve years after my grandad died, I bought a Ducati. Two and a half years later, Trev was looking at the bike’s registration papers because once a vehicle is three years old, it has to start having annual MoT tests to make sure it’s road-worthy.

“It’s your bike’s birthday on Thursday,” Trev said (isn’t it odd that I can remember exact details of conversations, sometimes?)

“Thursday?” I said.

I went a little light-headed and I sat down.

“That means my bike was ‘born’ exactly ten years to the day that Grandad died,” I said. (It’s also odd how my brain picks random, strange facts out of the ether like that too and then allows me to be so affected by the strange and random facts). It upset me more than it should have.

I had a friend come over. She’s a Medium and we arranged an evening that she could come round and read for a group of us.

She told Kristyna (my friend’s mum, the lady that’s ‘adopted’ me as one of her own) that someone close to her, one of her daughters, maybe? was going to have problems with her mouth. Kristyna kept a wary eye on both her daughters all week. Trouble was, it was me that got the infection…

That Medium stood in my living room and she kept close to one corner all evening (not this corner, I’m not that predictable) and she told me someone ‘athletic and sporty’ was keeping an eye on me. My Grandad’s dad was a top-class footballer and I knew he played, but I didn’t know he was in the top 100 players of his time. That’s a fact I learned only a year or so ago, so she couldn’t have known that.

He was so good his picture was on a cigarette card, back in the day.

Dani, the amazing girl, was always a cheerful little soul but she didn’t half worry me. She would sit looking into space, fascinated by something I couldn’t see.

I don’t have many photos of my Grandad and those I do have, I cannot find!

I’m pretty sure he’d be having a right old laugh at my expense if he was still here.

The picture I want to find is one Christmas, Dani is sitting on my Grandad’s lap. The best I can do is show you this one, where she’s sitting in the same chair, a year later.

He’d have adored his great-grandchildren.

Happy Birthday Grandad.