Too soon ????

A couple of weeks ago my uncle moved to Spain because he got a new job. He moved to Marbella a place where I have gone many times before with my Granddad. I’m really close to my uncle and we have talked about me going over to visit him this summer. I really like going to Spain I have been there the last four years in a row with my granddad and so I know they area really well and I can get around no problem on my own. My uncle says I can go over anytime I want and my dad said that I can go over any time I want to the only problem is I don’t know if I’m ready to go back there just yet.

Because this has been my T.Y blog up until summer I haven’t had the chance to blog about personal things so I’m going to explain why I don’t think that I am ready to go back to Spain this year. Last summer I went over to Spain with my Granddad, my dad and my brother Paul. After my mam died I got really close to my granddad and so did my two brothers. Me and Paul and Shane pretty much done all that we could to look after him while he was losing his sight and so whenever he wanted to go on a holiday he brought me or Paul to help him and well to spoil us as well.  We would go over every year with him and stay in his sister’s apartment. Each year someone else was brought along but I was the only one who went each year, I think that was because he bought everybody else to Lourdes but he never got to bring me.

My granddad :)

Last year my dad came along with me and Paul but he had to fly home early because he had an appointment that he couldn’t miss. That meant that me and Paul would be alone with my granddad for four days after my dad left and that meant nothing to me and Paul really because we had been there alone with him before.
About two days before my Dad was due to leave we headed out early in the morning to do a bit of shopping, nothing unusual. My granddad wasn’t one to complain even with that in mind when he complained about a toothache earlier that day nobody took any notice. We went shopping as usual and when we were waiting in the line he collapsed. I had seen my granddad collapse before once when he went into a diabetic coma and knowing that like the day that he went into a diabetic coma he hadn’t eaten any breakfast all I could thinking about was that it was going to happen all over again.

Luckily the shop that we were in had a medical area on a lower floor and my granddad was seen by a doctor where we were told that his blood pressure was low and his sugars were too high and that he was suffering form sun stroke. We were told to get him back to the apartment so that he could rest and that is what we did. The next day he wasn’t quiet himself, tired warm and not able to keep anything down. We kept him on bed rest and we had all agreed if he didn’t get any better we would call a doctor. Then Friday came the day my dad was due to head back home and my granddad insisted that we would all go to see him off to the airport and so that’s what we did and we headed back on the bus home. We arrived home and my granddad went to lie down after telling us he felt a bit dizzy. Me and Paul had decided that if he wasn’t better by the next day we were going to call a doctor.

That night things seemed a bit better. To me I thought he wasn’t as pale and when he told me and Paul to go for a walk and get something to eat he even sounded better but I was wrong but I just didn’t know that yet. To make my granddad happy me and Paul went out for about half an hour then headed back to the apartment. Once we did we all headed to be and to me I felt at ease and thought things were going to get better...... I was wrong.

At 6 O clock on Saturday morning Paul and me heard a knock on our bedroom door and soon followed our granddads voice telling us that he needed to go to the hospital. While Paul was trying to sort out getting an ambulance and finding a doctor and all of these kind of things I sat with my granddad and when he told me he had a pain in his chest the first thing that came to my mind was has having a heart attack. After figuring out how and what hospital to go to and finding out that the ambulance wasn’t going to come with the help form two nice me that kindly helped us get a taxi we were on our way to the hospital. It was only down the road so it was convent for me and Paul and we could walk to it.

I’m not going to go into all of the details of what happened on the Saturday and to cut what all ready is a long story short then end result was that my Granadad was having a heart attack and he was having it for a number of days. The doctors tried to up him on a ventilator to keep hi alive but he died that day. Paul had the horrible job of telling my dad on the phone that his dad had died while he was waiting in the airport to come and see us with his two brothers and my granddads brother and sister. I told my brother Shane the horrible news and I can tell you that is something nobody should ever have to do. The doctors and nurses were nice to us and did help us a lot especially with the language barrier.

On the 28th of August last year my granddad died in Spain in a place that was like a second home to him. I do want to go back to Spain I do but I don’t know if I can go and not always be reminded of those horrible few days. I didn’t man for this post to be telling people how my granddad died but I wanted to share something about my granddad with people. Maybe it wasn’t my best idea to share his death but I’m going to work backwards writing blog post about his life and the amazing memories that we have had together.

This was a very personal blog post and I didn’t meant o have it so personal. I thought about weather or not to post this blog because its nothing something most people like to read and it might seem like I’m looking for sympathy but I’m not. It’s almost been a year since he died and maybe by me going to Spain this year it might be a way of helping me move on from what happened. All I know right now is that I miss my granddad but he was a great mad, an uncle a dad a friend a knight of Malta and what more my gag. A true inspiration he was. I’m going to blog more about the fun and happy time that we spent together.

 Writing this blog post has helped me in more way than you could imaging, it’s hard to talk about these things but writing them down is so much easier and I think that everybody deserves to know what a great man my grandfather was and still is.


Comments

Amy Brady said…
Great post Shivvy :'( We miss him so much - it's fantastic that you have chosen to write this because the world lost a truly great person when we lost our real life Knight - and stories about him and his amazing and accomplished life deserve to be shared x I will never forget him - he taught Shane and me so much and we will be forever greatful to him for that - he always made me feel like part of the family and we are devestated that he will not be there to see this become a reality. But apart from all that - we know - that he would never want us to feel like this - and the memories and stories that he shared with each of us keeps us going. There is not a day goes by that we don't think about him and thank him for making us the people that we are today.

I agree sometimes it is just too soon - I know it's awful but we still haven't been to the grave or the house since the funeral - to us we still think of him on holidays in Marbella - and for us to just go to the grave just feels too soon - I think it would ruin that memory for us. Sometimes it takes time to heal - but Gaga always took his time :) and he'd understand us doing the same xxx
June 21, 2011 at 3:18 PM
Shane said…
you forgot one. He was truly a BIG BLIND. IM ALL IN
June 21, 2011 at 5:15 PM
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