All change

Holy fuck… where do I start? I’ve been kind of awol the past few weeks.

My grandfather’s pancreatic cancer finally caught up with him and he died back on the 29th.

I spent the last three weeks on part hours, working in the mornings and then spending the afternoons trying to sort his things out. We threw out twenty or thirty bags of scrap clothes. We gave away another 15 or so to charity shops and hospitals. We’ve cleared the loft of crap and we’ve sorted a lot of stuff from the cupboards but we’ve still got a pile of banks, trusts, charities and associations I need to talk to about his death.

Granny is now in a home – a great place near to her house where the nurses look after her beautifully. She doesn’t have any idea who I am. Hell, I’m not sure she knows who she is.

We had a cremation service for him on Friday 13th. It was sad to see so few people there, but most of the people he knew from work are in their 80s and live in the London area. It was never going to happen. Family were there, as were the village. It was a nice service, even if we weren’t able to have the music we wanted (stupid virus precautions).

We opened up the village hall and invited everyone down for booze and pizza. It was good not to have a normal reception but to have a bit of a party. He was a good man who deserved to be celebrated not mourned.

Monday we went down to London, the horrible smelly people filled city that I hate so much. A wonderful woman from Kings College showed us around the old PRO site at Chancery Lane. It was a trip that we’d arranged for me and my grandfather. She happily showed my brother and I around instead. It was a shame that he couldn’t make it with us. He’d have liked it down there. The building has changed a lot since his time, but they’ve been sympathetic to the building at the same time. They’ve kept several of the old ‘cells’ with their metal frames and slate shelves. When they stripped out the rest of the cells they reused the slate shelves to put features around the lift doors.

Next stop was the National Archives. In comparison it’s a horrible 70s abomination. It looks like a brutalist concrete car park with some library/call-centre hybrid inside it. The only upside to the entire building was a decorative edging in the walkway up to the building – made from slate slabs the size of a bookshelf. A nice touch that would have been completely lost on all but a very small handful of other people.

Today (well, Tuesday, since it’s now after midnight) we buried his ashes. It went perfectly according to plan, apart from the fact the vicar didn’t turn up and we had to reschedule for 3 hours later.

I realised something scary though. I’m the oldest male in the family. I’m the oldest sane person in the family. So what, you may ask. I asked the same thing. Until I realised that people have started looking to me for a little leadership. That’s fucking scary.

The other scary thing is that I’ve just spent more time talking about bookshelves than my grandfather’s death.

They’ll be writing an official obit for The Times. Maybe I’ll post a link to it – they’ll describe his life so much better than I can right now.

Tags: family