Thanks guys,
Your thoughts are all thankfully received.
Everything is OK, actually - I think I am coping strangely well. I feel 'normal' most of the time (no more happy/sad than a normal day), which is strange because I am a little emotional by nature, but apart from when I had the phone call to say he had passed, I have been OK. In quiet moments, if I think about how I'll never be able to see him smile again, I feel an emptiness, but apart from that, but apart from that I have been OK. A slight wibble about whether my hair was going to be a state for the funeral, now sorted, but apart from the the only upset I have felt is from the absolutely phenomenal nastiness from some members of 'the family' regarding the funeral, which just proves that families are crazy, but I put it down to the stress of the loss and so forgive them.
My nan is coping well, speaking to her makes me feel very settled, and between talking to her and Craig, I am just grateful that his passing was not painful or drawn out, and I know how lucky I was to have him around for such a great period of my life
The most important thing to my grandad was that I was happy, so this year I'm going to concentrate on being positive and on making the people that matter to me happy, too. Thankyou to everyone who passed on their thoughts, and to those who dropped me a PM (manly, manly macho men with a mean reputation, included).
Here's a funny tale about my grandad, to round of this rambling post:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
When I was about 13, I came home from school to find my grandad sitting outside the closed front door of our flat. In my memory he is eating a pasty, but grandad appears to be eating a pasty in most of my memories of him.
This is how he came to be sitting outside that door:
We lived on the first floor of a very small block of flats. My grandad had gone to the bathroom, which, for whatever reason, had not a standard bathroom lock, but a lock which you used with a key. The key was always on the inside of the bathroom (of course) apart from when my mother visited and bought the younger kids with her. My nan always locked the doors from the outside to stop the children 'getting into everything). My mother had, that day, popped by with my then four-year-old brother, so locked all of the doors from the outside.
Mother left, grandad used the bathroom without moving the key to the inside, and for whatever reason, Nan had turned the key and locked him in.
Nan (as deaf as a post) then put the TV to it's usual ear-splitting volume and settled down to a few hours of mind-numbing daytime TV, 1990's style, Grandad still in bathroom.
Grandad, not being one to do what most people would do in this situation (someone - either my Nan or me returning from school will have to used the bathroom sooner or later... just wait for them to do so) he decided to climb out of the tiny bathroom window, down the drainpipe alongside the window, and back into the block of flats, whereupon he rang the doorbell and pounded on the door, only to be still drowned out by Changing Rooms, or whatever was on at the time.
This is probably when he went t buy a pasty and wait for my return.
OK, it's not an amazing story, but I was 13 at the time, which would have made him at the time... 81 or 82.
So, a man in his 80's, who would chose to shimmy down a drainpipe rather than just wait for someone to let him out. Acebest, and a little bonkers. I have no idea how he managed to not break a leg or something worse