SJ Longthorne

It’s strange looking someone in the eye and knowing that’ll probably be the last time you do so. The last time I dealt with loss like this, I was a child, and it happened retrospectively; I was at school, and I found out by seeing my family gathered outside the gates.

Then, it was my dad. We knew it was coming, but as a kid, you don’t really know what that will mean. It just happens one day, and that’s it, your life is different now. Now you will hear plates crash from the kitchen and your mother crying, and you won’t know how to deal with it.

Back then, I wasn’t given a choice over my last memory, because I didn’t know when it would be. I don’t actually have one. I ran out of the door to school that morning without saying goodbye.

But today I went to see my dad’s parents knowing I would likely never do so again. I had to decide which words would be the last I would say. I had to decide which glance would be the last I would take before leaving the room. Which picture I would burn into my memory.

My grandma saw me crying. She gripped my hand, smiled, and said “Goodbye”. I don’t remember the last time I heard her speak, before that. Once, she would mumble, but even that doesn’t happen much now. But today she said goodbye.

My grandpa thinks he’s on a cruise. Today he asked me which port we were stopping at. I was happy. I passed people in that care home who clung to door frames crying “Help me”. But my grandpa thinks he’s on a cruise. There are worse things to believe.