Things lost that can't be found...

Today I'm at my Grandmother's house waiting. Just waiting for people to call, waiting for my son to finish his long afternoon nap, waiting to be able to go home and get dinner on. Just waiting.

I'm in my Grandfather's study. When I first set up Making Do and Mending last year the 'Mending' referred to the fact that I lost both my Grandfathers last year in the space of just four weeks. As my Mum said later in the year, 2010 owed us a good one, because 2009 was just about people dying. So now I'm doing my waiting while sitting in the place where my Grandpop did his filng, typing, thinking and writing.

When my Grandmother is gone I know that this house will be gone too, but I am sitting here wishing that we could keep this room to visit whenever we liked. There is so much of my Grandpop here. Literally, he had so much filing! But also, it is just so amazing what he kept in here, and what he kept. I've just found a little magnet stuck to the side of his filing cabinet that gives his name and what it means. I have no idea who gave it to him but I know that he must have kept it because it meant something to him, like the little cartoon that someone drew him to thank him for monitoring a conference, or the pictures of the family, or his little address books and a neat drawer of his pocket diaries going back decades.

Last week I looked after my Grandmother for the day and I went to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. Seeing my Grandmother's name on the prescription they asked me how my Grandfather was and I had to tell them that he passed away. The pharmacist said that he had always been coming in and that she was only commenting to another member of staff this week how they hadn't seen him in a long while. I was really taken aback. I knew that he regularly went to the high street, did all his shopping there at the same shops every week, but it had never occured to me that anyone else had noticed, or that he had spoken to people or made an impact on their lives. It made me smile, so like my Grandpop, and then miss him terribly.

My Mum says that people stay alive in our memories. I hope that I have stories to tell my son about Grandpop so that even if I can't sit in this room or touch any of these things any more I can still feel him close like I do today.