My Grandad and Me - my Guardian Angel

My Grandad with me on my Christening Day

I really loved my Grandad. He always had time for us, his grandchildren, and he made our daytrips adventures, firing the imagination and starting a life-long interest in me of history. He had a collection of rocks that he had found on his travels and people would bring him back samples from their hols and amongst the smells from his petrol mower of cut grass, he would lovingly unwrap his latest stone, all neatly labelled as to location and type, and tell me its origin and characteristics.


Granny didn't "do" children, so as soon as she could she would pack us off with Grandad and we would drive around the countryside in his maroon Mini, the "Puddle-jumper" and laughing, singing and telling jokes (often about elephants) until we reached journey's end. The only times Granny came out with us was to feed the ducks in Stockbridge (near Winchester) or as we knew it Tockbridge, because the sign outside the butchers' shop was missing its "S" and then we would be given 50p to spend on sweets at the sweet shop at the end of the road of shops. Back when 50p could buy you tons of sweets and penny chews really were a penny. Sweet cigarettes, cola spangles, pink sugar mice with string tails (that made your teeth tingle with all the sugar in them) - health and safety would have a fit. Grandad's favourites were the barley sugar loaves and humbugs, but we loved the curly-wurlies and Freddo chocolate frogs, the memories come racing back.


But Grandad died nearly 14 years ago and at first I couldn't talk about him or think of him without tears rolling down my cheek. He had treated me as his grandaughter, but seen me as a person as well, encouraging me in my thirst for knowledge and interest in history, things that other relatives found difficult to do. For years after his death (which was very sudden, although he had been ill for a while) I kept wishing that he had met my son, but then realised that it would have been completely different, "Grandad" would have been "Greatgrandad" and wouldn't have the energy, and I started being what Grandad had been to me to my son, seeing the adventure in as much as possible and sharing my knowledge and stories with him.


Grandad wasn't a great one on religion, but the vicar taking the funeral service found a very apt reading ("Death is nothing at all" - which I'll include with today's blog just for completeness) and when I miss Grandad I think of that. But I do believe that he is watching as my Guardian Angel, and I thank him when I feel his hand in events that happen to me. I sometimes feel his presence in the still and that and my warm memories of him remind me to encourage my son as a person too. He wasn't perfect and initially you had only one chance to impress him at a first meeting, but nearer the end he did mellow and I think he did actually approve of my choice for second husband, having not trusted the first. But the memories I hold are the good ones and that keeps him alive in me, so now I don't miss him because he's with me, influencing me still and keeping me safe, just not in person now.



xx