The Bonny One

 As I tipped the dregs of tea around in my cup, looking down, I realised it was time to go. The atmosphere in the room had changed as my eldest cousin and his family began to clear the plates. I stood, clearing his teacup out of habit, though this was not my house. We were in Tunstall in Sunderland, a place both strange and familiar to me. Though everything had changed since I left this city, their accents gave me a distant sense of belonging. Gary stood, moving to take grandad’s coat from his wife’s outstretched hand. His three girls looked up from their colouring. A rainbow. That picture they drew was an eerie premonition, now that I think about it; a foreshadowing of rainbows in windows and clapping for heroes.

“We’re off to see Vince now, grandad, or we’ll miss our aeroplane!” I cut through the silence. As it always does when I speak to him, my voice became awkwardly loud as I stressed the consonants and exaggerated my lip movements so he could hear me. My accent suddenly flipped to match the others’ in the room. He appeared to get the gist.

“Ok pet, do I need my coat?” Before he’d even finished talking, Gary was already helping him put it on.

“It’s bloody freezing grandad, it’s January man!” he exclaimed, patting grandad’s back as he continued to fumble with the zip.

Meanwhile, I was thanking Paula again. I told her how lovely it had been to see them. To tell you the truth, I was grateful to everyone who was able to see us during our time in Sunderland last year. It meant a lot to me because it made him happy. More than that, though. It made me happy. For a long time, I haven’t felt like I have much of a family. It rarely bothered me over the years but being around grandad a lot means I’ve always felt tethered to them by an invisible string. Mum has four brothers, and each of them have children and grandchildren of their own. Though (as in many families) there are countless tensions among the Hillsys, we’re family. I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately.

We all walked together to Gary and Paula’s front door. Though I was merely an observer of this particular goodbye, I could feel the weight of their hearts on the room. It was the same heaviness I’d felt the day before when we’d said goodbye to young David. Even at the time, as tears streaked the flushed cheeks of grown men in the cold North winter, I recognised their pain. I’ve felt it before.

I felt it on Christmas Eve in 2011 when he’d rang our phone complaining of chest pain. When I watched my mum’s face turn white, saw her run from the house and swing the car out of Ash Close. When I forced a number I’d rang a million times in to the phone with numb hands, selfish, young, desperate – “Grandad, please don’t die.” Those tears… They’re tears from deep in the chest, awash with the poison of pain. Tears caused only by the spectre of death, who whispers the question like a January wind down your neck: What if this is the last time you say goodbye?

In a way, the spectre of death casts a shadow over us all. When we are young (as I still am in many ways), he walks a hundred paces behind and so you barely notice him. You are fast and able and you feel like he’ll never catch you. But, when you get old, your legs become weary and your footsteps slow… so he catches up. He stands behind you when you’re old, his black cloak licking at your heels. That’s why old people are cold all the time.

It is this spectre, reader, breathing down the necks of the old that keeps me awake sometimes. Because, yes, he follows us all, but he is standing on my grandad’s feet. Like his other kids, like Gary and David last January, I am conscious that it’s only a matter of time before the spectre of death lays a hand on his shoulder.

That is my darkest thought – I have many light ones, too, so don’t worry. I believe the reality we construct for ourselves in our heads is our responsibility. We can choose to build a palace or a prison; a pair of white wings or a spectre of death. But, alas, I am human. This body shackles me to a reality that is not always beautiful and poetic.

Which brings me back to my story. Our final stop on a tight two-day schedule in the North East was Seaham. Uncle Vince is not my uncle at all, he is grandad’s brother, but as I’ve grown up hearing him called that it has stuck in my head. I’d never been to his house before and I’d only met him once before that I can remember. He answered the door almost at the same time grandad knocked, and both brothers’ eyes, blue as the North Sea, were glazed with tears as they embraced.

The visit was short and sad in many ways. Vince asked after Hilda, my Nana, and Mary, his wife. We couldn’t bring ourselves to tell him they were long dead. The spectre of death and I listened in silence as the brothers reminisced. “I was always the bonny one, Bill,” Vince said, laughing freely, full of innocent joy. “You were the daft one.”

As we sat in the airport that night, both exhausted, I could see in his eyes that he was content. No price can be put on that. Though this 90^th birthday weekend had cost me hundreds, been hard work logistically and involved reuniting with family I’d had no idea if I would ever see again, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Today, on January 4^th, the 13^th anniversary of Nana’s death, Vince joined Mary in heaven. I told grandad a story not about the spectre of death, but about a pair of white wings.

Grandad told me to tell you only that his beautiful wife and his little brother will always be loved.