How ya doin' Grandpa?

My grandpa, who lived in Australia, died 6 years ago today. I had only recently got to know him having visited him for the first time on my own 6 months earlier. He did visit a few times when I was a teenager, but being a teenager I didn't have much time to chat with him then. We did chat on the phone fairly often after my first visit to him, when my parents and I went over together, in 2005.

My mum, his daughter, was already with him when he died, but I was at work in Israel when they phoned to tell me. My friends were amazing, contacting a travel agent who sorted out a flight leaving that evening and then paying for the flight when confirmation of funds was necessary by Visa, whose office was closed!

When I got to the airport about 10 o'clock in the evening, I presented my two passports and yet the check-in chap asked me for another one ... My Israeli passport was about to expire at midnight! Fortunately there is an office for the Ministry Of The Interior in the airport and they were able to renew my passport in about 5 mins.

The journey route had me changing planes at Bangkok, with what seemed like every other single person who was on a flight that day from whatever part of the world! There were a lot of worried people around me, as it really looked like we wouldn't be through the check-in gates in time to get on the plane! On top of that, when they'd checked my passport at the incoming passengers desk, they'd dropped my Australian visa which was on a separate piece of paper tucked into the passport. I was practically in hysterics by now.

Fortunately they had found it and were waiting for me to claim it.

By the time I got on the plane I was frazzled! The chap I was sitting next to took pity on me, having asked if I was ok and getting to hear the whole story whether he bargained for it of not, and ordered us a double whiskey each!

The funeral was booked for a week later as no-one knew how long it would take me to get there, and we used lots of rosemary instead of flowers for the event. I sobbed uncontrollably all the way through the service, broken hearted to be robbed of someone I'd only recently come to know so well and now wished had been part of my childhood. We had got on so well in the brief time we had together, I think we'd have been good buddies had he been in my life earlier.

Hope you're having fun up there Grandpa!!