My grandad is dead. He died peacefully in his sleep a couple of days ago. Of old age.

I knew he was old and frail. And I think he had been very lonely since my grandmother died. He sold their house and moved into an appartment on his own. But lately I think he had been spending a lot of time at my uncle’s place. And I know they have been talking about finding a retirement home for him. So he’d have people to take care of him. My mother tells me that he had just been sitting and half-sleeping in his chair, not eating much. I don’t think there was so much left in life for him. And I don’t mean that in a sad way, I mean that in the way that he has had a long life with love and happiness and now it was time to go.

Things like this makes it easier to understand why people need religion. I don’t really believe in Heaven, if I have to sit down and think about it. But I do like the idea of my grandad and grandma being together again somewhere. If there is a heaven then we never lose anyone we love. That thought is a lot more comforting than the thought of disappearing into nothingness.

All my grandparents are gone now, from both my mother’s and father’s side. It’s kind of a strange thought. It seems like another world. The past. When I was a happy little kid. And visiting grandparents was a wonderful treat. They lived on Zealand, we live on Jutland. So we had to take the ferry. It was like going to another country. Staying at our grandparents’ houses. Having a fuss made over us. Feeling special. Getting candy and strawberries. My mother’s parents had a back yard with vegetables. Fresh peas from pods. And a little cold-room, I don’t know what it’s called. It was a locked door and stairs down, but not any real room. Just stairs down and then shelves. For storage. With all sort of treats, it was like a magic place behind that door. And my grandmother always had these bonbons, red ones. She had a jar that was always full of them. No matter how many of them she gave to you, the jar would always be full. I think they were close to the clichéd perfect grandparents.

I don’t really remember my grandad on my father’s side. He died when I was young. I vaguely remember hospitals and not being allowed to see him because he had tubes going in and out, which I never really understood. I remember he had a big taxi cab. And that is about all. My father’s mother was sort of peculiar. She didn’t speak perfect Danish, it was mixed with Finnish. I have family in Finland but I remember nothing about them. Anyway, I never wanted to talk to her one the phone because I just couldn’t understand her. But she was always sweet when I went to see her. She would say “herreguda” wich means something “oh my lord” or something like that. Oh my lord what a sweet little boy I was to her. She had a room that was full of stuff. Literally full. Of literally stuff. She must have had some kind of collector’s mania. For real. She had stacks and stacks of old magazines. Tv guide things. I was always fascinated by that room, somewhat like the cold storage room at my other grandparents’ place. I would sit and look at all these magazines from years and years ago. It was sort of like time had stopped in that room, the past was all condensed into things, into belongings. Like she was holding on to the past like that. By not throwing anything out. And it was fascinating for me because that past was very much past, it was like history. From a world before I was born. Her whole appartment was like history. Old time television. Coffee coater. Shoehorn. To me it almost seemed like a museum.

It does seem like another world. One that I lost contact with. When I started getting worse. The phobia got stronger. It was hard just to go outside where I lived. So I stopped going on family visits. And when family visited us I hid away in my room as much as possible. I remember completely absurd occasions where I’d stay in my room, starving, and then when the family went out shopping or to go see something I’d run out and get something to eat and run back to my room. All to avoid facing them. For very long I didn’t see them. I always wondered if they were disappointed in me. Going from being a happy, smart kid to being a dropout shutin. I never really did see my grandmothers again before they died. I have seen my grandad when he came to visit us in recent years. But it is sad, one of the things that my phobia has cost me. Many years of seperation from my family. Time I won’t get back. But if they’re in heaven now, then maybe they will be proud of me when I get my life sorted out. That’s a comforting thought.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 21:37 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.