On Mortality and Passing The Torch

Papa Bill was taken when I was five. A few days earlier, he'd come home from work, felt ill, collapsed and been put to bed. He never got up again.
As was the way, in those days, where I lived, the women got on with laying him out, the men dealt with the funeral arrangements, and us children were farmed out to relatives on the other side of the family where everyone carried on as if nothing had happened.

But he'd been such a huge figure in my short life up till that date that there was no way that I'd not notice he wasn't around. I knew the adults were upset. They'd been upset before when one of my uncles got drunk, so maybe that was it. Or maybe my two grandmothers weren't talking for some reason (they sometimes got like that, both being strong women of independent mind), so maybe it was that.

Then, after the funeral, somebody, I think it was probably my dad, told me that Papa Bill was gone and I felt like my heart had been ripped out. (To this day I've never underestimated the ability for little kids to feel real burning anger or terrible grief that won't be bought off with a cuddly toy or a promise of a trip to the seaside). Fortunately (?) my pet canary had died that summer and Dad had explained to me that sometimes things have to die to make space for new things. In my kid logic it made sense. I'd got a new baby brother last year, Papa Bill must have been taken to make space for some other little boy or girl to be born. It didn't make it seem any the less unfair and, to this day, I miss him terribly. But it made a sort of sense and I sort of understood that people and animals are born, live a while then die.

When my oldest daughter was little I got her a hamster. Partly because it was time she learned some responsibility and also because it'd be fun for her to have a pet. But in the back of my mind I also knew that it'd die eventually and she'd learn. The inevitable did happen and, yes, she learned a little. When I was comforting her, after we'd built a little coffin and buried the little rodent in the back yard, I found myself saying "You know, sometimes something has to die to make room for a new life. Maybe a hamster is being born somewhere to be a pet for some little boy or girl..." and it felt like my Dad's voice from years before.

Both my kids were lucky enough not to lose any grandparents until they were both in their teens. When my mum passed there was no way not to tell the youngest as there was a police car waiting at my house to take me to the hospital. The folk who looked after the kids asked what we should tell them while we were gone and I asked them to say nothing, just that Nana was at the hospital. When we got back my daughter had worked things out for herself (but was savvy enough not to say to her brother) and we just hugged. I put off telling the lad for a couple of days as I just couldn't make the words and my mum had been to him what Papa Bill had been to me.

There was no easy way to do it and, especially as I was starting to get really angry at helpful relatives who were either firmly for or firmly against telling him anything, I took him aside and broke the news. It was possibly the most hellishly awful thing I have ever had to do and I now understand a little about how my poor dad must have felt thirty odd years before. His sister saved the day though, she gave her little brother the biggest hugs then told him "When I was little, I had this tiny hamster..."