Deprived of not knowing more

Sometimes I can feel like I have been deprived the opportunity and the pleasure to know my grandparents better.

The only grandparent I have left is my grandad on my mother’s side. He has also been the one who has had the least impact on my life. My younger cousin ones described him as a bit of a “troll” haha, which is pretty funny when you think about it, because it’s kind of an accurate description of him.

My grandma died very young, hence I was also very young. I was too young to get to know my grandma more than just as grandma, she was never Else-Marie to me, she was just grandma, and I feel so deprived of not knowing more about her. I think I was 12 when she passed away.

I had a really close connection to my grandmother on my dad’s side. She had to children, my dad and my uncle, but she always wanted a girl. So when I was her first grandchild, and a girl, and I stayed the only grandchild who was a girl, she just put more effort in to me, and I of course in to her. I loved being around her. I spent a lot of my younger years at my grandparents’ house in Malå. My granddad used to sleep in another room (also called my room) and I would sleep with my grandma. It was a great time. I loved being there. My grandma died when I was 18, on the same day as Kristina graduated from Umeå. When I found out that she was sick, I was 15, I thought that she would live to see my children grow up, but she never got the chance, and I think she died long before she took her last breath, the Alzheimer took her piece by piece until northing was left.

When my grandma died, I think my granddad died to. After that he was never the same. A few years after my grandma died he still did things, like going fishing and just biking to some soccer game or just down town to have a coffee. I didn’t really understand how lonely he was in the beginning. Even though he is the grandparent that I have known the most in my adult life, I don’t think that I ever got to know the person who was my happy granddad, at least not in my grownup life. Still, he is the one grandparent that I have had de most contact with, and the one that I have had a grown up relationship to. He was a kind person who thought that he didn’t matter to him. I tried to tell him at least a million times that he was a big part of my life and that I loved him, but I still think I said that last part to little, that I loved him. I should have told him more often, every time that I saw him, talked to him on the phone. I hope he knew, and I hope he still knows, that I loved to talk to him when I lived in Umeå. I loved to visit him when I was in Skellefteå, and how said I was when I he didn’t let me come in through his door.

Because all of this, I always try to tell Tobias how utterly lucky he is to have 3 of his grandparents left. That he should cherries that and visit them often. I like visiting his grandparents too, I try to make them as my own sometimes, because they are lovely people, all of them. I’m sad that I never meet Tobias granddad sense they had such a strong connection, and I think that Tobias granddad and grandma was one of the happies couples in this world and when she talks about how happy they where I have a hard time holding back the tears, because they were as happy as we are, and I can’t imagined how sad she must feel sometimes going through life without him by her side. I hope that we get to be as happy as they were in their life.