"Blood is thicker than water" has got to be one of the worst phrases in the world. I realised at about age six that it wasn’t true. I have family members who have never spoken to me because of things that happened before I was born, yet I have friends who have been in my life as long as my own sisters. And I had a wonderful grandad, who came into my gran’s life twenty seven years ago.
One of my earliest memories is of Frank. I was about three and he was looking after me and my sisters. They were both upstairs having a bath (supervised by my gran) and I’d already had mine, so I scuttled downstairs in a cloud of Johnson’s talcum powder. Frank had sneaked me a mini tube of Rolos, which I practically inhaled. My gran called me upstairs so off I popped and when I returned, my Rolos packet was empty.
To this day, Frank would have me in tears laughing as he described me looking around the room for my missing last Rolo. It took him weeks to admit he’d eaten it and I couldn’t find it in my three year old heart to forgive him, despite him repeatedly buying me additional packets of Rolos.
But I didn’t mind really. Frank was the sort of grandad that everyone wanted. He swung us around in the air and he patiently watched our puppet shows where we dangled a mop over the garden wall and he loved every wobbly painting or carefully crayoned picture we’d made at school. And as we got older, he shook hands with every boyfriend we brought home and tried not to wince on our maiden voyage in the car as we turned a corner just that little bit too fast.
He became a great grandad in 2007 and this opened a whole new chapter of his life, as he watched eleven great grandchildren come into the world. Frank was one of those people who children naturally adored. He could sit on a bus for thirty seconds and there’d be a baby waving a chubby little hand at him from a buggy.
Frank was one of my favourite humans. He was the only man I’ve ever loved who hasn’t let me down. In the last twelve months, I’ve faced some really crappy times and Frank was there throughout, holding me as I cried. I suppose there are some good things to take from being twenty seven and never having lost a family member, but I used to worry that the babies I've lost are on their own up there. Now Frank is with them, it brings me peace.
It’s a cruel world we live in that someone as good a person as Frank was has been taken from us. It saddens me that he’ll never see me bring a baby into the world or dance with me at my wedding. But I won’t sit here and mope (or I’ll try not to at least.) Instead, I’ll try to remember him for all the important things, like his cheeky sense of humour, his good heart and the fact that he still owes me one last Rolo.
