grandpa

Grandpa visits at least once a fortnight and has done for ten years. That was when my eldest child was born and he was the first grandparent to hold her. I don’t know how he managed that, I think the others were being polite.

Grandpa can be grumpy, but that is because he is always in pain. He has been in pain long before he was grandpa, not long after he became my big brother’s daddy. He took a nasty fall down some stone steps which he was helping his badly arthritic mother in law down. Six months later he was diagnosed with arthritis. I think he was 27 or 28.

He has had artificial knees, elbows and one shoulder. The consultant won’t do the other shoulder until an artificial elbow is replaced. The elbow man doesn’t want to put grandpa through the operation and suggested he think about it for a few months, so grandpa lives in pain and the simple task of getting dressed in the morning is painful and arduous.

Grandpa worked in factories until he took redundancy at 58 and retired. This was after a prolonged battle with septicaemia, where we weren’t sure if he’d survive. It’s legacy is recurring ulcers on his legs and feet. His dream of being a market gardener died when his health first failed, he has always worked in factories, his colleagues supporting him by doing any heavy lifting when he had bad days. I remember my mother hugging him in the living room as he wept one day returning home early from work too ill to continue.

He has never let it beat him. He has been an enthusiastic and skilled vegetable gardener. In the summer, he brings with him green beans, strawberries, onions, carrots and potatoes and tomatoes that smell of the earth and the taste of which ruins you for any other type of tomatoes ever. In September, he brings apples from the tree and I bake pies, crumbles and apple cake.

I made a rare visit over to his place at the end of the season last year and he was sitting in his chair sucking on his teeth – a habit I hate – ruefully assessing that there was a patch of garden he couldn’t be bothered to dig over in the spring and so he hadn’t had as many carrots as he should have and they were “beautiful”. A little alarm bell sounded. I couldn’t recall a time he’d not done a complete garden.

A few weeks ago, I called round (I live 40 miles away) He had been told to sit with his foot up and rest because of an ulcer on his foot.  He looked smaller and he sounded quiet, sitting watching the weeds grow on a hot spring day. Over the brow of the field outside his house they have built a retirement home. He keeps saying he should move in.

I took a child and spent two days with him to keep him company, unfortunately it rained so I couldn’t garden and I think he just wanted to be left alone.

Then my brother went over and they did some gardening, I spoke to him on the phone and he sounded good. He came over for Easter but was too poorly to walk so wouldn’t come to the shops and I only just managed to get him to come to the pub for lunch.

Today, I was running about trying to mop and brush and dust before he arrived. He wasn’t as prompt as usual, I was confident I’d get it done. The phone rang. Grandpa was too ill to come. This is the first time I can ever remember this happening. I don’t like it. I am upset. I want my daddy.