Dear Grandad.

Dear Grandad,

Mainly what I remember from today is the smell which wasn't your smell.  You smelt of hospitals and cleaning fluid and things which I didn't really want you to smell of.  Probably because it signifies the immense change you've undergone in two short weeks.

I'm sorry you were in pain, and I'm even more sorry that I couldn't understand what you were trying to say to me, especially because I imagine it's one of the last things you're ever going to say to me.  I want so much to have one last conversation with you - for you to know who I am and understand me and tell me something about your mother or about your childhood.  I'm sorry that I've forgotten already quite what it was like to have you as an - almost - fully functioning person who enjoyed eating trifle and listening to Notts County playing football on the radio because you couldn't see the TV well enough.

I would have done more.  Do you know, I wish, wish, wish that I'd taken you for a walk in your wheelchair to get an ice cream.  I promised you, and we never got the chance to do it.  I had three months off in the summer, and it would have been so easy for me - it would have just taken an afternoon - and I never did it.  Even when I passed my driving test and the world was our oyster.  You never realise what you've got until it's being taken away from you.  One day, me and you will go to the park and have an ice cream.  Perhaps, though, it will have to be the part of you which you've given to me and will always be inside me.  The part I got from Dad.

I keep thinking that it'll be the same, but it won't be.  It'll never be the same again.  And I know that this is clichéd  terribly clichéd   But then isn't everything surrounding this really, really horrible bit of life?  Because everyone feels the same feelings when they're facing the abyss; the unknown.  The same despair and the same wishing that they'd been granted one more day with the knowledge of what was so imminent.

Do you know what I'm most sorry about in the world?  That I didn't go to see you on that Wednesday evening because I was too lazy to visit you.  In my defence, I didn't know that you'd fallen so badly and that you were in so much pain and that it wasn't just nasty bruising.  But if I'd just had the - I don't know - if I'd just popped in for ten minutes, maybe I would have been able to get you the help you obviously needed sooner?  Maybe you wouldn't be in the state you're in now?  I'm sorry.  I'm so, so sorry.

I'm going to leave you now.  I don't know, in my head I've got this crazy belief that you know what I'm saying that, somewhere in that mixed up head of yours, this is going in and that, when I'm sitting by the side of your bed, you know what I'm thinking.

I love you, Grandad.

Kate xxx

PS.  Geoff feels the same.  He's been making me fold and re-fold clothes all day for you.  It's his way of showing he cares.