Notes from an ageing writer

The grandkids are all right...

It was an offer I could not – would not want to - refuse. “You want to come to my house to play, grandad?” Amelia asked. And so I will be heading over to their home next week to play with my granddaughter and her little brother Harry. I say play. My knees and hands often ache these days and my energy is limited due to new cancer treatment (of which more another time soon) but I will do my best with the hide-and-seek, being chased round the garden and having my glasses plucked from my face.

The way Amelia made the request, so pleadingly and lovingly, got me thinking about my grandchildren and the central role they play in my life these days. They are beautiful little souls: Amelia, now three and a half, all firecracker hyperactivity and giggling, and 18-month-old Harry more reserved, less effusive with his smiles, though he has gradually warmed to his grandad.

So here are 10 things that make me smile when I think about them – cameos that comfort me amid the demands of new treatment (thankfully much less brutal than last year’s chemo) and the physical wear and tear that now besets me…

AMELIA

1. Playing hide-and-seek with her and when I shout: “Is she under the table?” she shouts back: “Yes!”

2. When she sees bruises on the back of my hand (as I now bruise easily due to the thinness of my skin as a result of the all the steroids of recent years) she holds my hand and tries to kiss them better.

3. The mischief – mixed with joy – in her eyes when she ignores our ‘no’s’ and runs off in her socks on wet grass, laughing excitedly all the time as she knows she is not supposed to.

4. The way she tickles my various chins saying “wibbly, wobbly” as she does.

5. The way she tickles Harry’s chin and says “tickle, tickle” and he giggles.

There are so many other things she says and does that tickle my fancy. How she grabs the last of my ice cream, after she has finished her own, and stuffs it in her mouth giggling at my expression of mock disgust. The time when she came into the room to find that mum’s friend who had come to visit was no longer there and Amelia asked: “Where’s my new grown-up?” And when I bought her a new T-shirt that she liked and she said: “Well done Grandad!” She can upset me too. Because she is brave to the point of fearlessness, she can fall over and hurt herself but then insist she is fine. I have to say that it is OK to tell people that she is hurt and only then does she allow herself to admit any pain. I do hope that changes.

As for his Lordship bringing smiles to my face…

HARRY

1. I love that as soon as any music begins playing, he starts dancing from side to side and a huge grin appears on his face.

2. The way he grabs a biscuit from my hand and devours it, like a swooping seagull after a chip. It affords me a chance for more of my faux outrage that makes him smile at his own naughtiness.

3. His two lower front teeth revealing themselves with each smile waiting for company. They made him look like some cartoon Rugrat, or, for older readers, Swee’Pea in Popeye.

4. How, when he has had enough of walking, he throws his arms up at me wanting to be picked up. And when he is, he wraps his legs around me like a little koala bear. Cuddles are a welcome recent addition to the process.

5. Life is so black and white for him. Everything just now is either “No”, with a shake of the head or “More” with a look that nobody can refuse. Richard Burton’s sister once said that the trouble with ‘Rich’ was that he had the sort of face that meant you always forgave him. I fear Harry will be the same.

I wish Vikki could have known them. I am just coming out of the time of year when I always miss her that bit more. February (six years ago now) saw her death and funeral, and after the numbness that accompanied those, March marked the time when the impact of the bomb that had gone off in my life suddenly and savagely hit me. My grandchildren have offered salvation through the recent anniversaries of those dark times and an outlet for the love deep within me but which lay dormant for some time after Vikki died.

About a year after her death, a friend put me in touch with a man named Irvin Yalom. She thought he might help me with my grief. Irvin is well known in the States, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Then 89, he had lost his own wife, Marilyn, after 65 years of marriage, a few months earlier and was writing a book entitled A Matter of Death and Life that would become a best seller. I was just finishing The Breath of Sadness.

In the end, it was less a therapy session than a deeply spiritual hour during which two grieving men, linked also by being writers, shared their sadnesses and their memories of the loves of their lives. He told me something which has always stayed with me: that the fear of death is in direct proportion to the amount of life unlived. I guess that explained Vikki being mostly accepting of her demise towards the end; she had certainly lived her life to the full.

In A Matter of Death and Life, Irvin – now 93 and remarried last year - also ventured that: “Ultimately, I have come to the understanding that one stays alive not only for oneself, but also for others."

I think of that too when I think of my grandchildren.