Tomorrow it will be two months since Pa left the planet. I visited his wife this week because she had a birthday and I wanted to be there for her at such a difficult time. She's a wonderful person. She cared for him so well and misses him too.
After my Nana went in 1999, my pa remarried at 80. He had such a positive loving relationship with Nana, I don't think he would have known how to live alone. The year he was alone was terribly sad. It was great to see him setting off on adventures again with a companion to care for him. He was a big traveller.
Today I have been thinking how lucky I have been to have a grandfather, that I enjoyed being with, until I was 41. I lost my Nana when I was 34. They were both really important loving forces in my life. I lived with them (and my parents and Auntie) for the first 5 years of my life. Pa used to say to my boyfriends, "She's a wonderful girl, bit spoilt though!". He should know, they were the one who couldn't let me cry as a baby so my parents tell me and endless other kindnesses in the years to follow.
When my daughter was two months old, my husband and I moved in with Nana and Pa for some months whilst we looked for a house. Nana had just had a hip replacement operation, so I cooked for Pa and helped out whilst she was on the mend. It was a beautiful time of my adulthood and I cried when we moved. Everyone was astonished thinking I'd be delighted to be buying my first home, but I didn't want to leave their warm and loving home.
My children were old enough to know both of them and loved them as I did. I think we were incredibly lucky.
They were really there for me for such a long time. I remember as a child asking my Nana to promise me she would never die. She never would make that promise. She reassured me telling me I would be fine when it happened, I would be ready. I wasn't, but I can't complain how long they stayed nor the quality of their presence in my life.
After my Nana went in 1999, my pa remarried at 80. He had such a positive loving relationship with Nana, I don't think he would have known how to live alone. The year he was alone was terribly sad. It was great to see him setting off on adventures again with a companion to care for him. He was a big traveller.
Today I have been thinking how lucky I have been to have a grandfather, that I enjoyed being with, until I was 41. I lost my Nana when I was 34. They were both really important loving forces in my life. I lived with them (and my parents and Auntie) for the first 5 years of my life. Pa used to say to my boyfriends, "She's a wonderful girl, bit spoilt though!". He should know, they were the one who couldn't let me cry as a baby so my parents tell me and endless other kindnesses in the years to follow.
When my daughter was two months old, my husband and I moved in with Nana and Pa for some months whilst we looked for a house. Nana had just had a hip replacement operation, so I cooked for Pa and helped out whilst she was on the mend. It was a beautiful time of my adulthood and I cried when we moved. Everyone was astonished thinking I'd be delighted to be buying my first home, but I didn't want to leave their warm and loving home.
My children were old enough to know both of them and loved them as I did. I think we were incredibly lucky.
They were really there for me for such a long time. I remember as a child asking my Nana to promise me she would never die. She never would make that promise. She reassured me telling me I would be fine when it happened, I would be ready. I wasn't, but I can't complain how long they stayed nor the quality of their presence in my life.
an interesting family of characters is assembled, complications are listed and neatly resolved by the end. There is warmth and magic as the broken down things in the central teenagers life come together at the end to form the whole and perfect day.
