Today our caretaker at work suddenly died.  Bob was a smiley fellow in his sixties.  Slim frame, smoker’s gentle London voice and smoker’s lungs.  Slim and cheery, always so cheery. He was someone who had become part of my every day am.  I park my car and there he would be, popping out to say ‘morning’ from his underground office or in the lobby and a comment about another day in the rat race and a chuckle.  That was 9am this morning.  At three pm someone came into me to say he had been found dead in his office.

Already this week my family have been in remembrance of my Uncle who passed away a year ago on the 19^th May.  His wife had fallen seriously ill and was in intensive care in hospital.  The panic and shock and unhealthy life style he had led took it’s toll and he died of a heart attack; A broken heart. She made it through to find him not there…

It’s also the remembrance of my granddad Alf.  The blond curtain haired cheeky chappy that I was so close to through all my years.   He is the one who used to sit with me as a child playing a word game.  He would say to me ‘Think of as many words as you can beginning with the letter G’ and being about seven or eight years old I would sit and concentrate for what felt like an hour.  I’d have a list of about ten words.  If we had the same word we’d cross them off and the winner would be whom had the most left.  It took me years to work out that he had always been reading my words and putting less than me so that I would win but learn also.

Grandad was a religious man who never went to church.  A solitary man who married once and then was never connected to anyone else although we were always suspicious that he liked the lady in the local launderette.  He had watched every nature programme on television.  He saturated the meat in too much fat.  When he cooked for my friend and I and I told him my friend was vegetarian, grandad panicked and said ‘but kid what does he eat?’  My friend ended up with a big plate of cabbage.

He snored like no other and when I was age seven I used to have the top bunk of bunk beds and him the bottom and I’d fallen asleep on an old style cassette recorder where I had tried to tape the evidence of the snoring.  Everyone knew though.  You could hear him from down the street.  Grandad who started crying when I cried at the monkey’s dying in the film Project X, because he didn’t want me to be upset.  Grandad who laughed the loudest when we did impressions of him.  Grandad who listened to every thought I had like it was the most important thing he could have ever heard. He loved us all so much and we loved him.  He really was the best Grandad a girl could have wanted.

So in remembrance my little blog a reminder that all we have is the here and now and it is a waste to not live life for the moment. And a glass raised to Bob, John and Grandad Alf.  Rest in Peace.