Last week I had this unbelievably vivid dream about my granddad who I lost four and a half years ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Maybe that's where all of this has come from, I don't know. Whatever the reason, recently I've found myself going over all the stories I've been told about my grandparents and about how I'll never get to meet them. And just how bizarre that this. They're a huge part of who I am, and who my parents are, and I'll never properly get the chance to know them.
This isn't going to be a really sad post where I dwell too much about death and stuff, because I think we all have enough misery in our lives to read about that. Though, the dream I had that night and all my thoughts that have come with it have inspired me to do a Who Do You Think You Are? kind of search into my family history. I want to find out where and who I really came from. I've always had such limited knowledge about the family that came before my mum and dad and I've never really thought about looking into it, I guess because I've never known any different.
Growing up, it was always just me, my sister, my mum and my dad. All my aunties and uncles live all over the world; with an auntie in Adelaide and an uncle in Mississippi, and the rest still living in Lancashire where my mum was born, I never really had them around. Of course, I knew my cousins and we visited each other a few times a year, but I've never had the close relationship with them that I'm sure a lot of other people have with theirs. It's just the way it was and I was actually perfectly happy with it just being the four of us.
I think the one thing that's always left a bit of a hole in my life, however, is the fact that I've never had my grandparents in my life. Everyone around me have always been incredibly close to theirs, which of course makes me so happy to see, but I also can't help but feel a slight ounce of envy. Why didn't I get to know mine? The other day somebody was telling me about all the amazing memories they have of going on family holidays with their grandparents, having them there at their 18th, about how their grandad was the one who taught them to drive - even little things like their grandma bringing round a blanket that she knitted for them. I've never had any of that. I only ever knew one of my grandpas, and I lost him in September 2012.
I don't know much about my other three grandparents. Two of them passed away before I was even born, and the only memory I have of my grandma is a photo of a six-month-year-old me sitting on her lap. She died not long after that photo was taken, which obviously means I was way too young to remember anything about her other than that her name was May, and that she was Buckinghamshire born and bred. My mum does talk to me a lot about her mother, my other grandma, and I think I would have really liked her. I know that she lived in a flat just fifteen minutes away from our family home, and I know that her name was Kathleen. As for my dad's father, I don't know anything about him apart from that he died very young in the early 80s.
Whatever it is that's made all these thoughts come into my head lately, whether it was that dream that's sparked them or something else, I'm really interested in finding out more about my ancestry and where my family came from. The older I get the more I want to know. I want to finally get to know my grandparents.
Katie X