A decade ago I was separated, waiting for my divorce to come through, and to be perfectly honest… I didn’t have a direction in my life. I wasn’t happy, although I pretended a lot that I was, and I certainly was no good for anyone else.

I haven’t gone back to check, at least not recently, but my posts from that time period on this blog more often than not reflected my frame of mind. I was in a bad way: I was depressed without the official diagnosis. I don’t say that in an effort to be cool or to grab some belated sympathy, only to in some way show where I was and how far I have come since then.

Everything changed in 2017 when I met the woman who – as of last Tuesday – became my wife. She is good to me but more importantly, she is good for me, in a whole manner of ways that are impossible to lay out for you. Suffice to say I tried to tell her and all those in attendance with my overlong 1200 word speech after the ceremony, but some feelings go beyond words, even for someone who is comfortable writing them down, like I am.

I hope that as we move forward I can prove to her that the vows we exchanged last week were more than just a formality, or the signing of a piece of paper, and that they are something we can build upon in the months and years to come.

There are not many things more stereotypically male than being able to change a tyre, and I had my chance to do just that at work.

I noticed my rear driver’s side tyre was running a little flat about half way through my day. My hope was that I could negotiate the rest of my shift with a little careful driving and speed management… and then I could get around to fixing the problem. Except, of course, that’s not the way things worked out, and I had to pull into the side of the road with the darkness beginning to fall and the rain already doing so.

When I called my boss and asked her if she had any pointers for me, she told me I should know how to do it because, well, I’m a man. True, I am one of those, but I’ve never changed a tyre – I’ve never had any need to do so. I know what needs to be done, just not how to do it. I really think that kind of thing should be a part of every learner’s driving lessons.

So, I watched a YouTube video and one minute and thirty-four seconds later I was ready to give it a go. I managed to get the van off the ground, but… ahem… my nuts were too tight, and no matter how much I channelled my inner strongman I wasn’t able to get the tyre off. As luck would have it, and completely unbeknown to me, I had broken down outside a garage. One of the guys came out to ask if I was all right, then proceeded to finish the job for me in about the length of time it had taken me to watch that video.

Of course, I loosened the nuts for him, but I still had to hand over my Man Card.

My grandma was two months short of her ninety-seventh birthday, when she took her final breath yesterday. The dementia had seen her deteriorate over the last half dozen years – slowly at first, but then quite rapidly towards the end – so she hasn’t been the woman I loved for a long time. That person had already moved on, and I have had to make my peace with that.

Still, it’s difficult for me to let go of someone I have known my whole life, no matter how diminished she was when that final curtain was drawn, and no matter how much I wanted it to be over for her. I have wished for her to pass on peacefully in her sleep many times. Is that a little selfish? Sure. I own that. But that pain; that emptiness; that confusion. Those moments when there was just nothing behind her eyes, which were all too frequent in the last few months. She didn’t deserve that – few people do.

On Friday I had been advised that she likely only had a few days left, so I went to visit her yesterday afternoon with the intention of saying goodbye. She was asleep – the doctors had given her a drug to calm her down – and she didn’t look much like the grandma I had seen even just a couple of weeks earlier. She was thin, gaunt, and curled up in the foetal position, and she never acknowledged my presence, but I sat there and I cried for all the good years and the good times we had had just the same.

As I left her side an hour later, after kissing her on the forehead one final time, I knew I would never see her again and that I was just waiting for that phone call. I didn’t expect it quite so soon, but just five hours later she was gone.

But my grandma’s death isn’t about letting her go, or putting her in the rear view mirror. It’s more about making sure I remember the person she was, when she was vibrant and full of life, and about treating those times with the respect they deserve. What she became in the last six years is not that person, and I won’t be remembering her that way. Dementia may have taken my grandma from me, but it won’t rob me of my memories.

I miss you grandma. Always.