I'm not sure how many of you know, but just before I came out here, my German granddad died. Well today is his funeral, so it's fair to say that my mind is on him, my family and my mum in particular (he was her dad).
When I first tried to write this post, it's fair to say that I didn't get it right. In the fear of being too open on such a personal subject, I ended up appearing too open about my apparent lack of caring. I'm very good at lying to myself, so I'd told myself that, because I'd been lucky enough to visit him just before coming out to Tanzania, I still had a fair few months before I was supposed to see him (he lived in Germany, so I didn't see him often) and therefore I could just delay the inevitable realisation of what this all actually means. I pushed him out of my mind whenever he came into it and it's only now that I'm forcing myself to think of him that I'm getting teary-eyed.
Opa (that's what you call a German granddad) was an incredibly intelligent and kind man. He had won his local chess tournament in an area where chess was extremely popular at the time and had a seemingly never-ending collection of books (as a child, I only ever stared at the enormous encyclopaedias). As a result of his chess talent, many of my memories are of us playing chess together. He had this amazing board and would always want to be black so as to go second (not that it really mattered which colour he was because he'd always beat me). He'd always try to teach me things as we went and ask me if I was sure I wanted to make 'that' move. Of course I was too lazy or stubborn to change and he'd prove to me pretty soon that I should have listened.
When he was in his 20s, Opa had lost his right arm, so another memory I have is just of buttoning up his sleeves for him (missing an arm didn't stop this man from dressing to impress). I didn't have the strength to do it most of the time, but he kept asking for my help and I was always quietly proud if I managed it. Then he'd thank me by gripping my hand with his wonderfully strong left hand that could have turned mine to dust had he tried hard enough. Him missing an arm didn't exactly help his balance, but he still managed to go for fairly long walks, the longest of which was to a restaurant called Brobarahof (I have no clue how to spell it) where I'd eat the most delicious, tender, paprika-bathed chicken.
Now for most people, dementia is seen as something that takes away a lot of what makes a person (brain size drops by about the weight of an orange), but from my perspective, it just created different kinds of memories with Opa. He had this hilarious combination of being able to handle his drink really well, whilst always forgetting that he'd had anything to drink, so I found it funny when we had to tell him to stop drinking because he thought he hadn't touched a drop.
When him and Oma (German grandma) eventually had to move to a care home, I just kept getting great memories. There was one time when I thought I'd achieved my lifelong goal of beating him at chess (I'm pretty sure that was the most excited I'd ever been at that point), but it turns out I hadn't spotted one of his pieces and then 4 moves later he'd won. Still, despite his dementia and my growing age, this guy could still beat me with ease!
A couple of years later it was his 90th birthday, which is when I got one of my best memories of him. Because of the language barrier between us (I know a fair bit of German, but not quite enough), we had never really had any prolonged chats. This time I sat down with him partway through the party and he started speaking to me. He spoke all about his siblings and how proud he was to have reached 90. It was just really nice finally being able to talk to him properly. Of course by this point his dementia had progressed a bit more, so we ended up having that conversation 3 times and I had to try hard to keep up my surprise at some of his stories, but that just made the memory all the more endearing.
Opa had always loved children and had always been brilliant with them, so it was great whenever I saw him playing with my youngest cousin. One of my favourite pictures that I've ever taken was of him playing with her at my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. I've got other memories of him playing with kids, but that one really sticks out because of the picture and how much fun he had at the event (he usually had to leave events because they got too loud for him).
My final memory of him is of the last time I saw him. We were playing this game called Tridom where you have to connect matching numbers on triangular pieces. We'd played this plenty of times before, but never when Opa didn't have his glasses and he usually didn't eat chocolate. As you have probably worked out, this was an exception: for one of his goes, he picked up the chocolate, stared at it and the game intently, before finally concluding that he didn't have any of the correct pieces, so passed the game onto me. He even managed to balance the chocolate on it's side. Somehow he'd managed to confuse the rectangular milk chocolate with the triangular white game pieces. Once the game had finished and he'd gone to the social room, we all just cracked up at what had happened. I don't think I got to say goodbye to him, but I'll take a memory like that over a couple of extra words any day.
Now over tonight and tomorrow morning, 3 astronomical events will occur that are visible to the human eye. One of these events is a comet flying overhead (my mum says he would have loved to watch it with me and explain the science behind it) and because it'll be exactly a month since his passing and I like to romanticise these things, it's kind of like him waving goodbye.
So I guess that I get to say bye to him after all. Sleep tight, Opa.
