I’ve been bottling this up for months.
MONTHS.
Ages ago, my mom told me my Granddad would most likely be coming to the UK. He’s a reverend, and has a convention here in the UK where they want to honor him.
He’s pretty “high up there” in the church circles, both in the UK and in Jamaica.
In March/April 2008, The Mr, myself, and 3 month old Noah flew over to meet him and my “Aunty Vie”. She’s my grandmother in law by marriage, adopted the title Aunty since I just couldn’t comprehend having a “replacement granny”. She’s not a replacement, but – whatever. It doesn’t matter.
I just remember that, during that visit, I was VERY conscious of how Granddad wasn’t quite as sharp as I’d remembered him for all those years. And hardly surprising, dude was in his early 80s after all. Yeah ok he was still climbing trees, and driving hundreds of miles every week, but still.
In October 2011, I, without My Boys, flew to Jamaica with the rest of my immediate family for a massive and surprise reunion. I wrote about the moment, the surprise moment, and it was one of the hardest posts I ever wrote. I didn’t do it justice.
It was hard to write, because in all honesty, I had flown to Jamaica to say goodbye. As far as I was concerned, I would never see him again, and The Smalls most definitely wouldn’t meet him. He was so tired and frail; in my mind I couldn’t see him lasting another year. Morbidly I spent much of 2012 waiting for That Phonecall. It never came. And then Mom said “he’s coming, with Vie, to the UK.”
Since then, I’ve been smothering a deep, horrible fear. A fear that it wouldn’t happen. I’ve been in straight out, no holds barred, plain old denial. I refused to believe it.
Every time I’ve spoken to Mom, I’ve asked the same words, again and again. “Is he still coming?” And every time, I’ve refused to believe her.
Today, this afternoon, my Granddad landed in the UK.
He’s here, in the UK for approximately 6 weeks.
He will get to meet My Boys.
My memories will be complete.
This is so touching and I know how you feel. I have an uncle in Australia, he has been over to us a few times and each time it was going to be “his last time” but the following year would come and back he came! The last few years have been alternate years and he has not been back for 2 years now so maybe that was his last time, thankfully my hubby met him on the last trip too so that was really good. It is lovely to have family around the world but in all honesty would we see them more often if they were closer? People spend so much time racing through life that we forget to stop and let others catch up.
This is such a wonderful story and I wish you loads of fun over the next 6 weeks as you squeeze in as much time with him as you can.
Big hugs and lots and lots of them lovely lady, lots and lots of them x
Am so beyond happy for you xxxx enjoy making those memories xx
You’ve given me goosebumps and I am sooo happy for you. That’s a four generation photo coming up 😉
I hope you and the boys have a great time with your granddad and get to spend quality time with him during his stay.
How awesome! The boys will have amazing memories of him now. And you will have better ones to look back on too.
Enjoy every single minute.
LA x
How beautiful.
I was on tenderhooks all the way through that blog post, pretty sure it would have a sad ending (all the signs were there).
GLAD he surprised YOU and YOU surprised ME 🙂
Have a superb old time, pun intended.
And hey get some pics; I know a lady who is good at taking them 😉
Liska xx
That's wonderful, I hope you all enjoy every single moment! 🙂
Oh yay for you! That's so lovely. Enjoy your time together.
Amazing. What part of Jamaica is your family from? My parents live in Kingston. It was very important to me for my wee man to see his great grandma and we managed to visit Jamaica and it was amazing to see them together! Unfortunately she passed away at the end of last year but she was 102 and had lived a full life!
Like Lika I really feared a sad ending, so glad it isn't, and hope his hime here is as yyou would want it to be.
Ah wow, that's so nice. Be sure to create memories that will last forever xx
Kind of reminds me of the line in The Shawshank Redemption spoken by Andy Dufresne: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."