Introducing Daniel to the grandad who never got to meet him

Confession time: I had planned to post this yesterday but mum life is mum life so I’m now looking at the clock as I give it a last check over and it’s berating me for the fact that it’s already ticked beyond midnight. I’m not sure if the fact that it’s only 12.08am makes it better or worse! But what’s another eight minutes when you’re reflecting on the events of the past 15 years?

The reason I wanted to post it yesterday was because the day was a significant one for little Daniel. At just 12 weeks old, we introduced him to the man we call Grandad-who-we-don’t-get-to-see. When I say ‘introduced’, I mean by way of a photo album because, as his not-very-snappy name suggests, we couldn’t actually introduce them, much as we’d love to be able to.

Yesterday marked 15 years since my dad died. I’ve often said it feels like a lifetime ago and yesterday all at the same time. Today, though, (and yesterday!) I can honestly say it feels like several lifetimes ago. In one sense that might be because it is. It’s more than each of the lifetimes of the four descendants who have been born since and will never get to meet him in this life.

So much has changed in 15 years. Dad died just months after seeing me start my first journalism job, graduate and meet the man I would later marry. I might wonder what he’d think of me leaving the career he was so proud to see me enter. Then again, I know he would be equally proud of me for the life changes I (and my siblings, for that matter) have embraced in the last year or so.

I know he would be so proud of both my children but I also know he would have been especially pleased by the arrival of his grandson. I know because he told me in no uncertain terms nearly 17 years ago and that’s never left me.

I’ll admit here and now that I never thought I’d have a baby boy. I was never desperate for a son and I’d have been equally happy to follow in the footsteps of each of my siblings and welcome two girls into the world. The pragmatist in me couldn’t help but realise that having a second daughter would be simpler in practical terms. And that was, in fact, exactly what I anticipated I was doing right up to the moment immediately after the midwife asked, “What have you got, Dad?” and Gary replied, “It’s a boy!”

And I’ll also admit that, very soon afterwards I burst into tears. Maybe it was partly the shock of knowing that the baby I’d been thinking of by our chosen girl’s name wouldn’t actually be known by that, but mainly it was the realisation that I’d fulfilled my dad’s dream of having a grandson.

In that moment, the words that my dad had spoken to me, as I held my youngest niece in my arms on her Christening day, replayed in my head: “When your time comes to have children, I’m relying on you to produce a boy.”

For the avoidance of doubt, I never felt any need to live up to that wholly unreasonable request. Anyone who knows me probably won’t be surprised to know that as soon as Dad had uttered the words he was put firmly in his place in terms of both the assumption that I would both want and be able to have children and the apparent belief that an all-female generation in the family would be a disappointment. To give him his due, he immediately conceded that I was right on both counts and that, no, he certainly didn’t love his granddaughters any the less by virtue of them not being male.

But as I lay in my hospital bed in February, Dad’s longed-for grandson having just entered the world, I couldn’t help but think, “I’ve done it, Dad.” And I couldn’t help but cry extra hard at the thought that he should be here to meet him.

So yesterday, as I do every year on the anniversary of his death, I got out my album of photos of Dad. Only this time I was able to show them to his grandson. I realise that at 12 weeks old Daniel couldn’t see them properly, let alone have any understanding about what I was telling him. But my hope is that, if we keep bringing out that album year after year, both Daniel and big sister Charlotte will gain some understanding about the grandparent they were never fortunate enough to meet and that they’ll want to know more, to ask questions, to talk about him like they would any of their other grandparents. Twice today Charlotte chose to pick up that album and look through it and it warmed my heart a little more each time. How amazing it would be if she continued to do that as she grows, not just on significant dates but on any day ending with a Y?

I hope that, in learning about Grandad-who-we-don’t-get-to-see, both children will learn something about love and loss, about grief, about legacy, about the preciousness and frailty of life, and so much more. And hopefully they will learn that it’s possible to feel both sad and happy at the same time, because I feel sad that Dad’s not here for Charlotte and Daniel to be part of his life, but I’m so, so happy that he was here long enough to make their lives possible.

As Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1-4 tell us in the Bible: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,…a time to weep and a time to laugh…”

We will never quite leave the season of mourning Dad’s loss but we look forward with anticipation to what the new seasons that are Charlotte and Daniel’s lives might bring.

Sarah Moore is the author of For the Love of Lentil, A journey of longing, loss and abundant grace, which tells the story of her experience of pregnancy and miscarriage. Copies of the book are available here.