Why I Wrote "A Final Farewell"
13 years ago, in 2011, my grandfather passed away. He had been without my grandmother for 7 years, and in that period, his health slowly deteriorated before he finally left us at the ripe age of 84. I mention this not because of his passing but because of how he felt at the passing of his wife.
My sister told me a story about a time she had taken my grandfather to the cemetery to visit my gran's grave. She recalled him walking ahead of her in those final few steps and then, as he arrived at her graveside, he said, “Look, darling, Samantha has come to see you. Isn’t that lovely, she has come all the way from Derby to say hello.” My sister told me that she had to fight back the tears when she heard him speaking as if my gran was sitting there in her favourite chair and she had just walked into their house.
That conversation took place probably a few months after my Grandad passed.
Fast forward to 2019, my son was 3 and at the point in his development where staying in bed was much less fun than running around the house, dragging things off wardrobes, or generally keeping his older siblings awake. All kids seem to go through this phase, and as parents, we negotiate, argue, demand, before finally conceding and sitting with them while waiting for tiredness to win over curiosity and playfulness. It was one of these evenings while I waited for my son to fall asleep that the conversation with my sister popped into my head.
Within minutes of thinking about it, I had taken out my phone and began to type on the notepad.
Harold Wood sat beside his wife’s bed. The white clinical sheets, all ruffled from her tossing and turning, lay across her body as she slowly breathed, the air rattling as it filled her lungs. Outside, the busy ward echoed with the low hum of quiet speech and laughter in equal measure, but they were apart from it all in a small private room at the bottom of the corridor. A cloudless, blue sky was visible through the large square window beside the bed, but the sight brought him no solace and may as well shown roiling clouds filled with the promise of torrential rainstorms for all he cared.
Staring down at his hands, not wanting to look at her lying there grimacing periodically, as wave after wave of pain coursed through her delicate frame. Harold began counting the brown age spots on the back of his hands before frowning at the grey hair supplanting what was once, a long time ago, brown. His distraction techniques had been well practiced in the past few days; since she had become less responsive, and pain regularly written on her beautiful face.
It was at this point I saw, in my mind’s eye, my Gran, sitting in her bed as we visited her. This was the last time I saw her alive… she was happy to see us, though she was having difficulty with her memory. Time had become mixed up, so she thought we were different people or occasionally recalled us as toddlers. She was still my Gran, and seeing her face as I wrote those words placed me, for a brief moment, in my grandad’s place. My grandparents were very much still in love with each other, though as a younger person, I don’t think I noticed until that very moment sitting beside my son’s bed typing into my phone.
Words came, and the room grew darker until the light from my screen was the only light in the room. I don’t know how long it took, but when I had finished writing, I wiped tears from my cheeks and looked at my son who was completely flat out and snoring away.
I went downstairs and handed the phone to my wife, without explanation. She read for a few minutes then began to cry before handing the phone back saying, “Dean… that’s heartbreaking.”
I didn’t re-read it for a couple of days as I had been busy with work and other life things that take up time. Then, as I tend to do after writing anything on my phone, I emailed it to myself so I could edit it.
To this day, I cannot read this story without getting a lump in my throat. It is not because the story is anything unusual or particularly sorrowful; I think it is because for a moment or two in time, I was my grandad and the woman I adored had gone and left me alone without her to talk to about the things I needed to say.
"A Final Farewell" is one of a couple of stories I have written that make me feel this way. As a man who is spiritual and firmly believes in an afterlife, perhaps the inspiration came from the love my grandparents had and likely still have for each other… or perhaps my gran acted as my muse on that night. Either way, I am thankful as the story, though short, is one I am proud of.
"A Final Farewell" is one of seven short stories you can read in my collection "Reflections". Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to know why I wrote my other stories.
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