easy grief?

A direct quote from my Grandad, before we begin: “Bottom line; Homo Sapiens is in reality a plague, whose main interest appears to be power and finance.” Love you, Bo.

The front door was open as usual. I headed straight to the bathroom and it was only my dad who saw me.

“You’ve got a visitor,” he said to his dad.
“Another one?” my Grandad replied.
“Hi, I just need the toilet,” I called as I closed the bathroom door. I did not need the toilet. I needed private walls around my racing inner world.

I needed my unquestioned moments to arrive.

I noticed the sink wasn’t as clean as usual. Toothpaste trails spoke of the night shifts my dad had been telling me about. He’d been modest concerning intimate care but I would later learn of a grimmer picture. I thought about how gently he’d taken on the role, how well he’d done. About when my time comes to care for him and how I might do.

Inspecting now, I looked around and confirmed to myself: Yes. Things are different.
My thoughts turned to my Nan and how much the disarray would be bothering her. I wanted to clean but I knew I couldn’t. I guessed she’d be sat where she always was, beside Rod. Seventy-odd years in. Waiting for the visitor now.

In truth, the thought had entered my mind to evade the situation entirely. I’d been warned about how deathly he looked and I didn’t want that image. But I have seen that duty can bind us for the best sometimes. That ‘not wanting to’ and ‘needing to’ are so often the same thing for me. In the end, I prepared myself to pretend that his decay did not disturb me.

I collected myself back to myself, looked into my tired eyes and tried to be kind. I was here now. Above the sink. I reassured myself with clean certainty:

Ella, there is nothing you need to say.
This does not need to be grand.
Hold his gaze, hold his hand.
To be here, is all.

And then the minutes were up.

“Ella!”

His beaming face met mine as I entered the living room. He clearly had all his marbles. My Grandad was very much alive. “Hi,” I smiled. I got close and instinctively knelt. He grabbed my hand with a grip I can still feel. The holding was so sure and so strong. A little desperate.

Kneeling at his feet, I was sure. I felt strong. I placed my other hand on top of his and I stayed. I was not desperate. This was not an inspection of his decay, nor the denial of it. I simply held his gaze.

In the way a flower locates the sun, I felt essential. Beautiful.

“Ella!” he said again, “You. You’ve grown into a fine young woman.” I bowed my head and took it in. “Thank you,” I said, lifting my chin. I began to cry.

For some reason, this remark made me think of my mum. How he’d known her long before I existed. Gone on to watch me grow and her decay. Present the whole time. How her death was not beautiful. And how he was not tender like this then.

I feel like a fine young woman and I also do not.

He saw my tears. “Ohhh I’m sorry!” he scrambled. His voice so new to me, all squirmy and concerned. “It’s okay,” I said. He wasn’t sure and I had never seen him like this before. So distressed, so sad. Tears in his eyes for the first time. I squeezed his hands and pressed them into his thigh. “It’s okay,” I brought him back. I held his gaze. There was nothing else to say.

He changed the subject to my holidays like a good British man. God bless. And after a moment he asked with hesitancy, as if he knew the weight of it, “So, what’s in your future?”

Ha. So much. Nothing.

Historically, Bo was not one for vague answers. Matter of fact on most matters, it’s fair to say he saw things as black and white. This or that. Useful or stupid. And, of course, don’t be stupid Ella.

I felt a pang and my own scrambling this time. His hearing is bad and my voice is soft. So there I was, on the floor in the centre of the living room, crying, trying to conjure up a script to shout to my audience of three. What will I announce about my future?

He was just making conversation. But he was dying and I wanted to give him something good. I was desperate to give him something good.

Instead, the failing of my own unmade family filled my throat.

I changed the subject.

My Grandad’s real name is Rodney. He always had toothpicks and whiskey about him. Born in East London in 1931, he was a Saw Doctor and Wood Machinist for most of his life. For most of mine, I did not much like this man.

I used to call him Bo, for the fact he would always make me jump by shouting “Bo!” when I was very small. He would laugh and I would not. I kept him in this cold, sharp Bo-shaped box as the years passed.

He was a good man, no doubt.
He also frightened me.

Looking up to him from my knees, our talk turned to his eyesight. The painkillers. The weather. How he hates being a burden and that he wished he would die.

Versions of the latter kept being cut off by the “Don’t-be-morbid”-orders of my Nan. Mortality, as it happens, is something I can get behind. “Yes,” I would say “It’s time.” We can all see the sink, you know?

In all of this, he seemed enamoured with me. So much softer than he’d ever been. Praise and fierce love. It felt like he was dying of thirst, gripping on to me for dear life, and drinking me in. I liked it. And in my own kind of way, I was doing the same.

After some time, he said “Go and make yourself comfortable.” Not in a don’t-be-stupid-Ella way, but in a caring-about-Ella way. It was sweet.
I wished I had done this of my own accord a moment ago, though. Because I’d had the same thought at the same time and I still didn’t like it when he told me what to do.

Bo and I disagreed on so much. At one point, this led to lengthy letters and then email exchanges that would span over about 8 months. Heated at points and agreeing on little, eventually, we managed to hear each other and I softened. I no longer felt defensive. I was no longer desperate for anything from him.

I really enjoyed trying and failing, and trying again, to write my muddled world view coherently. Especially, for someone who I felt lived on an entirely different planet. I grew close to him in this way. I learnt more about his history. His plans. I came to respect him and his ways. I felt he did the same.

On death he would say “Nothing is where you came from and nothing is where you’re going”. No debate on that one.

For most of my life, I understood his bluntness and intensity to be something I needed to defend myself against. In later years, I took much satisfaction in showing him I can be a fucking force - someone you may reckon with if you so wish. Try me.
I was told that my mother had a similar way of dealing with him. The thought of this still pleases me so much. I am the daughter of a sovereign woman.

I had been sat, comfortably enough, with my Nan for a while. It was time for me to say goodbye. My Grandad had been in and out of shut-eye, as he would say, for quite some time. My dad had returned from the pharmacy and I had a life to go on living.

I hugged my Nan on the sofa. Long and tight and I meant it. She’d just been declaring that she would be okay. How she’d have to be. How Helen and Roz, neighbours either side, were on their own too. If they could do it, so could she.

Odd to me, that I feel more known by Bo now. It was always my Nan who bought me toys and sweets. It was her who took me to the park, the swimming pool, the beach. Her who watched Disney with me on repeat. She was the one who held me when I missed my parents in the dead of night.

She was soft and warm and avoided involvement in mine and Bo’s stuff. She was also stoic as fuck. She’d be okay now because she must.

My Grandad rustled, realising what was happening. “Ella!” he said. “Come. Come with me.” Completely compos mentis but barely able to stand. I helped him up.

We hobbled into the next room on what felt like the most uneven ground. Concerned and unconfident in my capacity to catch his frail body, my hands were outstretched nonetheless. If I must, I would.

He gestured up as we arrived on solid ground, “I want you to pick one. Two. Three! Pick as many as you like. They’re yours,” he said. Firm now.

I smiled. High around the room sat a collection of his woodworks. His life’s work. These unusual ornaments had been so steadily present in my life, so familiar to my eyes. I really looked at them now. I thought about how wonderful it is - about how I want this, in the end. Something to give? I wondered what it is that I make.

I picked one.

There’s this thing he’s always done. On all arrival and when leaving, he would hold me back by the shoulders after a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He’d done it forever. He’d hold me there at arms length, stiff, for an awkward amount of time. Saying nothing. Inspection, I felt.

As an insecure teenager I hated this. Oh my god, I hated this. I couldn’t bear to look back and meet his stare. To me, he was another man who held me there by force. A man who seemed to enjoy wielding power over others, always so certain in his bigness and his rightness.

When I first started to look back properly, it was in retaliation and retaliation alone. When I began to challenge him intellectually, I began to test him here too; in the looking. Over the years, this desperate little battle dissipated.

The stare became a gaze.
I met his lovely scrunched face and I stayed.

The almighty difference between the perception of being inspected, and the relief of being seen. I had come to understand the looking in a new way. I had come to love this man deeply; his reasoning and his ritual.

Soft and solid mahogany in hand, it was time. We hugged. He kissed my cheek. “Ella,” he said, one last time. “I’ve had a good life. You know that.” He squeezed me, “I hope you have a good life.”

I nodded.
Tears again.

He held me back by the shoulders. Yes, I thought softly. And here it is. The very last gazing, the very last holding.

The letting go.

“I wish you peace,” I said, after our unquestioned moments, and all our unanswered questions.
“I wish you the same,” he said. “Go now.”
And I left.

Holding my little piece of him and all of everything.

On the walk to the car I cried. On the drive home I cried. I cried a lot and easily and I did not stop. And then my mind turned to all the things I had not said. How I wished I could give more thanks. If only there was more time?

But you didn’t and there isn’t, I brought myself back. Chin up. You did what you did and it was good.

I thought of him a lot in the following few days.

Then I get a message from my dad. News of my Grandad’s rapid decline. Things were increasingly difficult and he’d probably be moved into care soon. Sandwiched in between this information was one little line…

“He said your visit made him feel like was going to be going home.”

Wait.
Home?

Bo said what?
Denier-of-all-things-godly-Rod said what?

If I can give anyone anything in this life, surely it’s this? His message felt like the grandest gift.

Rodney Fredrick Tallack died on 30th Aug 2026. After 95 years of living. Strong effort, as ever. After refusing to eat or take his medication for weeks. After demanding death to take him for years.

He’d been reluctantly moved into a care home just 3 days before. At around midnight, he was found peacefully deceased.

None of the family were there.
He went home. God rest his soul.

My dad since told me that soon after I departed on that goodbye-day, Bo made commands of a pen and paper. He wrote one letter, addressed to myself. Penned it in the same strained way he did all things. Then he fell asleep.

On waking with a start,
he ordered that the letter be destroyed.

Of course.

And torn apart it was.