grandad kit

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

We are shell-shocked!

I am you other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are four years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure. I am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this.

To be honest, Nana Ann and I have not discussed our meeting with you and your Mam and Dad yesterday. We are shell-shocked. It was completely unexpected. You were everything we had hoped for, but your Mam and Dad were very, very quiet. They had very little to say to us. They were polite and treated us with courtesy, but I am very sorry to say it was a cold courtesy, Very, very cold. Freezing in fact. They didn't say anything untoward to us, in fact they said very little atall, other to answer our questions. There was no conversation in the normal sense of the word.

Beforehand, Nana Ann and I had decided to limit the questions we would ask. There are so many questions we wanted to ask, we could ahve asked hundreds! So we limited ourseleves mainly to how you were and how you were getting on at nursery school, and how you'd enjoyed yourself at the seaside and so on. But that was all.

So we came away with a sense of anti-climax. We waited all these years to see you, an now what? The way we feel, Nana Ann and I don't want to go through a repeat of what happened yesterday, not for our sake, but for yours. As you grow older, you will become more aware of things. And we definitely don't want you to be troubled or concerned about quarrels between adults - it's not your fault and it should not be allowed to affect you.

I couldn't stop thinking about you today (but I think about you every single day anyway). I can't work out whether it's best to have another joyless encounter and whether it might be better to wait a few more years - but that is unthinkable. If there was a glimmer of hope of making it up with your Mam and Dad, that would be something top show us the way forward and something to work towards. But right now I don't see even the tiniest glimmer of hope. I know my daughter - your Mam. She's very much like her mother, your other Nana, an I know her very, very well of course. The chance of either of them ever changing their minds, once they've made up their minds, is almost nil. So, while we're happy, vrey happy, to have met up with you at last, and hope to do so again, we are quite depressed at present.

But life must go on, and Grandad has lots and lots and lots of work to do in a very short time. So he'd better get on a do it and not mope around waiting and hoping for the impossible to happen!

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann