My Grandfather Died This Morning

He was an old man - his death certainly occurred long after the average (however that is calculated) age for his demographic, generation and gender. He smoked for years, did not exercise and ate a relatively unhealthy diet for much of it - yet he died in what I am told is a peaceful manner. He had chest pains on Friday and passed away Monday morning, in his sleep.


A comfortable death, I suppose. A late one, certainly. He had his independence to the end (he used to drive around "the old women" who no longer had their mobility; these women were, almost universally, young enough to be his daughter!)


I don't know if, given the choice, I would die like he did - but I suppose if I did I would have no reason to complain.


I won't be able to make the funeral - I am swamped with work, and I simply cannot justify the time off right now. It is the way of my family to be like this, I suppose; and the man my grandfather was would not want me to stop doing something I considered important and vital and worthy simply to stand in a black suit for a few hours. I will say my prayers and offer my Masses for him.

I have an odd approach to grief and loss; my rules to live by include the first, which runs Always be prepared for your own death. There is an adjunct rule to it also; Always be prepared for the deaths of others. I walk the talk, I have been prepared for this death for a very long time, at least since his heart attack which must have been fifteen years ago at the least.

I always recognised grief was selfish - in any situation, it has to be. Either the person is dead and gone and beyond anything (pain, pleasure, whatever) or the person has achieved an eternal reward or punishment. In any case, the emotional reaction is selfish - it is to feel sorry for oneself because you miss the person.

I do miss him. I've missed him for a long time, since I went to America, before that even.

But I am not built to feel sorry for myself. I won't even say grief is the price we pay for love, because that makes it too poetic. I will simply say that people die.

What sits most heavily with me is the fact my grandfather probably died alone - or, at least, without his family around him. He had been alone for a long time - his parents died when he was young, his wife died at least twenty years ago, he was an only child. He told me he had been alone for a long time, and he was used to it. I daresay he was so used to it it became comfortable, even welcome.

I know I would not mind dying alone. Maybe he and I were alike - I like to think we were. Maybe he would have enjoyed it, the peacefulness of not having people fuss over you and worry and project their own petty, human emotion onto an inevitable transition.

But I don't know - and that does make me a little sad.

I wasn't there, because I went to America and pursued . . . something. I am not sure what drew me here - it wasn't simply a selfish desire, but it was not just duty and my obligation to Christian love and family. My parents retired to Scotland. I don't know about my grandfather's other son - he and I have not spoken in years.

My family is not close. Never has been. The death notice from my father was the first communication he and I have had in months.

As I said, I cannot be at the funeral. But, I am always prepared for deaths of others - even yours, if I know you. I am ready for you to die. And so I have a eulogy. Here it is, in brief;

My grandfather was many things - but what will remain with me always was that he was the designer of the Buccaneer Bomber, a deadly engine of war which saw action only years after it was designed. He was head of aerodynamics at British Aerospace.

Ultimately, he made aeroplanes. That is what he did.

When man first crawled out from the forests of Africa, or walked from the Garden of Eden, or was formed in whatever manner your beliefs tell you he was, one of the first things he did - had to be! - was look up at the birds above him, soaring effortlessly. For centuries, we sought to learn to fly, to leave the earth and do something we could only dream of doing. We represented flight in our art, our literature, our legends. Icarus, Wayland Smith, angels and more.

The granting of flight to humanity was a long process, and one my grandfather did not really have a huge influence on. He was not a Montgolfier, he was not a Wright.

But, and this is most important, his work built planes. It made engines which could soar through the air.

No matter what else his work did - defending his country by building war machines, and fighting in the Second World War itself (we don't know what he did, he was tight lipped on it) - that I think will the thing I remember him for.

For centuries, men looked at the skies and said "I want to be able to fly." And for centuries, scientists had to say, "I'm sorry, you can't."

My grandfather made planes. He made men fly.

What did YOU do with your life?