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Both my grandmothers are still alive and despite them getting on a bit now, both of them still have their faculties and are lovely women. My grandfather's both past away within a few years of each other when I was in my late teens/early twenties. My mothers's father was a drunken prick who drank himself into a stroke and spent the last ten years of his life sitting in a chair pissing his pants and generally being a vegetable.
My father's father was, on the other hand, a quintessentially nice old Pa who was very much a fixture in my life until he died shortly before my 21st birthday. He taught me the finer points of cricket when I was growing up and he often came to watch me play on Saturday mornings.
He served as an Anzac during WW2, fought in Libya, Palestine then on the Kokoda Track which was one of the most hellish campaigns of the war. Japan was a real threat to Australia at that time and Pa never really wanted to talk much about it even when we were kids some 40 odd years later b/c it was such a profound experience.
Pa bought me one of my first Star Wars figures and he kinda dug it. We used to talk about the characters and who they were and shit. I was at my Pa's bedside when he died, riddled with cancer and fighting for every last breath as he drowned in his own fluids. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live.
George was a good man.
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