![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 6th, 2004 02:46 pmWell, it seems to be the time for it. My grandfather died last night. That makes three deaths of my friends or relatives in the last four months.
I'm afraid I'm not as upset as I perhaps ought to be. My granddad was old, sick, and in constant pain. His life had become an unending struggle to remain independent in his own home, in spite of his infirmities, and to prevent well-meaning relatives and medical people from admitting him or his wife (herself in the later stages of Alzheimer's) to a care home. It was only in the last few months that he permitted a council health worker to come in each day and help them dress etc. My father said that when he last saw him, my granddad's conversation was characterised by an almost unbelievable degree of stubbornness and denial.
He must have had an amazing constitution, though. He smoked heavily and drank like a fish throughout his nearly 90 years, suffered repeated strokes over the last 15 years, but still soldiered on, defiant. He outlived his first wife (my father's mother) by about 35 years. He ran a men's outfitter's in London for many decades; after the Second World War, "patriotic" locals threw bricks through his windows due to his German surname (both his parents were German, and came over to settle here at the very start of the 20th century).
His name - also my name, of course - got him into a different sort of trouble actually during the War when he was captured and taken to a German POW camp. The commandant, on learning his name, said he was a traitor to his country for fighting on the Allied side, and would be shot in the morning. After a night in a cell, waiting to die, he was told that the commandant had gone to another camp on business, and his deputy took a more lenient view of the matter. So my granddad was not shot. Shortly afterwards, he escaped from the camp with a couple of other POWs and made it back across Europe to England. It sounds like the stuff of a film, but it really was part of the life of the cantankerous, yet often jovial, unashamedly racist and homophobic, yet unfailingly generous old codger who was my granddad.
My poor dad must be so upset. I wonder what sort of funeral arrangements will be made? My granddad wasn't remotely religious - he had nothing but rude and hostile words for any sort of spiritual belief - and neither are his children or stepchildren.
I'm afraid I'm not as upset as I perhaps ought to be. My granddad was old, sick, and in constant pain. His life had become an unending struggle to remain independent in his own home, in spite of his infirmities, and to prevent well-meaning relatives and medical people from admitting him or his wife (herself in the later stages of Alzheimer's) to a care home. It was only in the last few months that he permitted a council health worker to come in each day and help them dress etc. My father said that when he last saw him, my granddad's conversation was characterised by an almost unbelievable degree of stubbornness and denial.
He must have had an amazing constitution, though. He smoked heavily and drank like a fish throughout his nearly 90 years, suffered repeated strokes over the last 15 years, but still soldiered on, defiant. He outlived his first wife (my father's mother) by about 35 years. He ran a men's outfitter's in London for many decades; after the Second World War, "patriotic" locals threw bricks through his windows due to his German surname (both his parents were German, and came over to settle here at the very start of the 20th century).
His name - also my name, of course - got him into a different sort of trouble actually during the War when he was captured and taken to a German POW camp. The commandant, on learning his name, said he was a traitor to his country for fighting on the Allied side, and would be shot in the morning. After a night in a cell, waiting to die, he was told that the commandant had gone to another camp on business, and his deputy took a more lenient view of the matter. So my granddad was not shot. Shortly afterwards, he escaped from the camp with a couple of other POWs and made it back across Europe to England. It sounds like the stuff of a film, but it really was part of the life of the cantankerous, yet often jovial, unashamedly racist and homophobic, yet unfailingly generous old codger who was my granddad.
My poor dad must be so upset. I wonder what sort of funeral arrangements will be made? My granddad wasn't remotely religious - he had nothing but rude and hostile words for any sort of spiritual belief - and neither are his children or stepchildren.
