This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 16

My daughter was only small when my Grandad started becoming ill. He suffered with emphysema and towards the end, he was just bones with a thin layer of skin covering them. I hugged him and I could feel every rib around his back.

He played cards at the social club every Sunday without fail, right up until his final days. He was good at cards and he always won. Just coins, no notes, but he always won.

I’d always been the favourite. That was something he never kept secret and maybe he shouldn’t have said it, but he did. He always told me that.

“I suppose she’s your favourite now,” I said as he cradled my daughter on his knee one time. He was looking at her so intently, studying her, enjoying his first great-granddaughter.

He looked up from the babe he held in his arms and fixed me with a stare so intense that I knew he was telling the truth.

“No, you’ll always be my favourite,” he said and I knew it to be the absolute truth.

I’m not sure if he knew I was troubled, but Grandad was my favourite person, and ‘With Grandad’ was my favourite place to be.

I hugged him once and told him, “I love you.”

His response was only, “Yeah,” but I knew he loved me, he’d always shown he did… he just couldn’t voice it.

My grandparents moved from that big house and took on a 2 bedroomed flat on the same street as my parents. I’d moved out by then and was starting married life and a family of my own.

Grandad’s garden was less than an eighth the size of his other garden, but even that got too much for him.

I went to see him one day and unusually, the door was locked and I couldn’t get in. I looked through the living room window and there was no sign of anyone, but I took a look through the bedroom window and Grandad was asleep in bed – not like him at all.

He lay on his back, covers pulled up to his throat, head slightly tilted back and his mouth was open, eyes closed.

My heart jolted in my chest at the sight and I think I knew then that we didn’t have long left to be with him.

My daughter wasn’t even a toddler when I got the call that Grandad was ill.

He’d taken poorly the night before and the locum doctor was called out.

Grandad suffered a ‘Silent Heart attack’ – lack of oxygen to his heart muscle.

I got the call mid-day that he was desperately ill and if I wanted to see him before he went, I’d have to get there soon.

Mid-day…

Not first thing in the morning. Not the night before…

Trev came home from work and we rushed out of the house to Grandad’s flat.

The phone rang as I was leaving the house. I didn’t want to answer it, but I did anyway.

“You’re too late, he’s gone.”

The journey of those few short miles were spent swinging from disbelief to utter, crushing grief.

When we got to Grandad’s, I was asked if I wanted to see him. I couldn’t speak, I just nodded ‘yes’.

My grandmother led me into their bedroom and he lay there in the same place, the exact same position as how I’d seen him a few days prior, when grandmother was out and he was asleep.

I looked at him and knew he was gone.

I kissed my Grandad one last time and said, “Goodbye Grandad, I love you.”

Sitting in the small living room, Grandad’s daughters and son, his grandchildren and families and everything was surreal. Silent, almost.

Then his youngest daughter called from the hallway where his coat hung.

“I’ve found some money!” she shouted, excitedly.

-"Excitedly" - her dad had JUST died and she went rooting through his pockets.

Her sister and their mother went to see. They’d found his handkerchief. Wrapped tightly in the handkerchief was a stash of coins – Grandad’s card-playing winnings.

Now, years on and I cannot, for the life of me, work out which is more distasteful.

The fact that my Grandad was lying in his deathbed, not yet cold and his daughters and wife were excited at finding his stash of pennies, or the fact that he’d needed to hide the stash in the first place.

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I don’t apologise for this memory. As someone said yesterday, they are “honest” and you only have my word for this, but as I write it, my Granddaughter is upstairs in her bedroom and I can hear her Grandad reading a story to her while I type up this.

I am a mess. Tear and snot-soaked tissue beside my computer, getting more soaked as I type.

My Grandad has been gone more than a quarter of a century but the pain is physical, a stabbing feeling in my heart and it’s hard to take in breath past the lump in my throat.

The only pictures I have of him are somewhere, probably the attic.

So for this post, the picture of his dad will have to do.