Even the strong…

My grand­father is dying. He has pan­cre­atic cancer. A few weeks ago, he blacked out and hit his head badly. Now he’s stopped eating.

After he fell, I went up to Sydney to see him and he was his usual self, a little thin, but still him. Last week, I spoke to him on the phone. He was still Grandpa: can­tan­ker­ous, threat­en­ing to stick around for the elec­tion so that the last thing he does in this life is vote Howard out, com­plain­ing about the Olympics on tele­vi­sion. “So how’s the new job?” he said, “Doubled cir­cu­la­tion already, I sup­pose?” We talked about the pos­sib­il­ity of an after­world, and he star­ted out saying the best thing about being dead is that you don’t know you’re dead. I asked him if he was scared, and he said he wasn’t. I told him about The Matrix and said some­times I think this is just a game that our higher selves are play­ing and that when it’s over, we’ll sit up and say “That was *fun*! I wanna go *again*’ He said, “Well, give me your mobile number and if there’s any­thing out there, I’ll be in touch.”

I’ve had a lot of argu­ments with this man. We prob­ably have a little too much in common: strong opin­ions, know-it-alls. I real­ise I’ve taken for gran­ted being brought up with a left-wing grand­father and a left-wing mother and a family where polit­ical dis­cus­sion was stand­ard at the dinner table.

I spoke to him today again. He sounds incred­ibly tired. He hasn’t eaten for three days. I told him it was too late for him to start a career as a super-model. A couple of times, he said “Haven’t got much else to say about the world.” 

He isn’t in any pain, which is good. He made it to 90, healthy until now, still with my grand­mother (65 years this year). 

I might be going up to Sydney again this week­end, to see Brandon. I think a visit to Grandpa might be on the cards too.

And now I’m going to go into town and watch Red Vs Blue on the big screen at ACMI and buy an Air­port Express and not think about how mean­ing­less my con­tri­bu­tion to the world is at the moment [1].

[1] Yes, that’s Salam Pax’s new blog. He’s back. Thanks to Nik for the heads up.