Last Words

The last words my Grandad said to me were: “I know what I’ve got to tell you…” Before he could tell me, the cancer pulled him back from this momentary gasp of lucidness and his words became wheezes and air.

I didn’t want to incur his legendary wrath by telling him I couldn’t hear or understand him, so I nodded along trying to look surprised and interested. He could have told me anything. It could have been the secrets of our family history, which he’d fervently declined to tell me.

It’s more likely to have been something to do with a painter, Rembrandt or Renoir, or something he’d remembered about my football team, Nottingham Forest. It could have been his counter-argument (which he’d already told me) to a particularly damning article I’d read about Churchill. It must have kept him awake all night. He had already told me I was wrong earlier in the year, but maybe he’d read or thought of something else, which could prove the historians, and me, wide of the mark. I’ll never know what he was trying to tell me. He fell asleep and that was the last communication I had with him. He died two days later.

The last meaningful words he ever said to me came after some banter with a nurse. He was trying to get out of bed and go home - he’d already tried to escape through the window a couple of days before. He rattled the sides of the bed with one of his bony legs attempting his break for freedom. He was never a man to tell what to do and since my uncle or my sister, weren’t there to calm him down, I felt helpless. A nurse with a weary face pounded in, roughly propping him back up on his bed like an oversized doll. A few weeks before he would have had her for breakfast, but today, emaciated and weak, she had the upper hand.

“Who’s this then Michael?” She said pointing to me. “Grandson” the weakened voice replied. “I think you’re better looking than him!” she replied, winking at me. Many old men would have loved this spot of contrived flirtation, but my Grandad ignored the comment. “We’re very alike” said the slightly rattled voice. “We share the same thoughts about things and if he has the life I’ve had… he’ll be happy.” With that he slumped back into the bed and fell asleep. It delighted me. At last, an outward expression of respect. He did love me.