Denial is underrated. In this case it must have saved me a great deal of worry. When Granddad went into hospital for the third time in six months, I was able to say, Well he’s fallen over; broken some ribs – it’s a mechanical injury; he’ll recover and be back with us, again, soon enough. The voice of reason might have muttered, Yes, but he keeps falling over, and is on twenty different medicines, and has barely recovered from last time. That voice, mercifully, was either absent or too quiet to be heard. There were not days or weeks of sour stomachs and sleepless nights awaiting the bad news; it arrived unanticipated, and delivered its misery in a single moment.
Granddad, too, had been in denial. Ever since my grandmother had been taken into a care-home (she also had gone into hospital expecting soon to return home), he had made himself busy with projects. Their bungalow was redecorated; the garden planted and weeded; a new shed built; a fish-tank installed and tropical fish acquired. The latest wheeze, which now looks beyond absurd, was a cruise. He wanted to go and see the northern lights.
I find myself hoping that he remained in denial until the end. He was dreadfully resentful of his old age and all the things it prevented him from doing. If he knew that he was dying I do not think he would have faced it stoically or with equanimity; he didn’t have the emotional maturity for that. He would have cursed and raged (which is no less answer than death deserves), but most of all I think he would have been frightened, and I don’t like to think of that. I would rather think that he was taken unknowing, fear and disappointment forgotten, in a deep and deepening sleep. Perhaps a selfish wish on my part but since it makes no difference now I’ll allow myself a little selfishness.
There are moments of cruelty to come. When have I looked in the mirror before and thought how much I look like him? Yet every time I catch sight of my reflection today it’s all I think. And Grandma will need to be told, and that will be horrible. She lives now in varying states of confusion – believing, often enough, that her own mother is still alive (she would be over 120-years-old). If she is lucid enough to understand what has happened, it will break her heart. But if she believes her husband is still alive though she never sees him… So she will have to be told, and told again until she understands it.
There was a long time when they could not see one another; she in the care-home, and he out of it, and a pandemic raging in the country. Their one attempt at video-calling was a disaster; Grandma, less-than-lucid and feeling abandoned, screamed at him things which my mother said were too horrible to repeat; it was a mercy that Granddad was near-deaf and so often refused to wear his hearing-aids. Their sixty-year marriage was not entirely easy-going, both of them anxious and brittle and short-tempered, and as much as he must have missed her when she was moved to the home he must also have found it something of a relief. After the FaceTime incident, he was nervous about seeing her, but recently, after several months apart, he found the courage to pay a visit. By all reports it went very well; she at her most lucid in weeks, he the perfect gentleman, and the love which had sustained them for more than half-a-century still very much in evidence.
He was not the nicest man and I didn’t entirely like him. He had a bad temper and an anxious disposition (which I know I have inherited), as well as tendencies towards violence and bigotry (which I hope I have not). But I’m very sorry that he’s gone. I dearly wish he had lived longer, and been able to do all the things he wanted do, and I’m sorry if life was something of a disappointment to him. But he did the important stuff: loved and was loved. That’s enough to be thankful for.
Love you, Granddad. Rest in peace.