Difficult Things

Funny thing, I don't know what to write at the moment. I should really in some way to commemorate the great Planet Skaro meet on Saturday, which was incredibly enjoyable and one of the finest meets we've ever had. Drank lots, chatted even more and I had a thoroughly wonderful time. I should write about taking Luke to his first Doctor Who signing and how lovely it was to see him chasing Daleks and shouting at them, and being wonderfully surprised to see K9 trundling up and down the shopping centre and having his face painted to look an Ood and the way he wasn't at all flustered about meeting people from the show... or even perhaps the conspiracy that's going on to close down one of my libraries (possibly)...

But it's all somewhat overshadowed by Nan at the moment. She had a couple of strokes a week or so back and was taken into hospital and given a blood transfusion which perked her up a bit and so the immediate threat was limited a little. But then she suffered a massive stroke this week, which has left her unable to do anything, not even talk now, and really, it's just a matter time before the inevitable happens. Not long after her 90th birthday... it's not a bad innings really.
I've been feeling guilty though. And this is a tough thing to admit, but although I'm sad about it, I can't help thinking that if it was my other Grandma dying, I'd be absolutely distraught. I feel bad for thinking that because I should love them equally, or at least that's the theory. Dad's family and his and our relationship with them is such a complex thing. I just can't ever get over that feeling that for much of our childhood, certainly until Jonathan was born at the very least that me and Vic were treated very differently to the others, especially to Dean and Kim. I will never forget the Christmas we spent with them at Bradford Abbas, where there was the box of presents that they handed out one by one and they all seemed to be for the others and not for us.
I can remember not really understanding why that was, and as we got older the discrepancies in the relationship only became clearer. It still hurts a bit, especially so because that never happened with Mum's family, were everyone was treated roughly the same (and still are, even now) and i just don't understand why that was. Maybe it stems from the way that Dad was treated when he was a kid, or maybe they just didn't want to make the effort. Who knows? I don't think I will now.
So I'm finding it very difficult to feel more than sad about this, hard as it is to admit. Maybe it will hit me more when she actually passes away, but really it doesn't feel anything like as painful as when Grandad died a couple of years back.
And the worst thing is I don't want Dad to know that I feel this way, because it'll really hurt him. I think there's enough hurt and pain in his relationship with his Mum as it is, without adding the guilt of our relationships with her to that. I don't think I'll ever get to the nub of the problems in Dad's family... I don't think that now Dad will either, because he'll never get the explanations now from Nan that that requires. Like everything else, it's finally going to be left unsaid and hanging without a resolution.

So I feel guilty for thinking these things, for not feeling as bad as I think I should, and what can I do? I can't make things up. I can't pretend. I'm not proud of that, but I've got to be true to myself, or else this becomes yet another thing in the Hart family that isn't quite real.

This has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. But at least I've been honest and now it's been written I can probably deal with it.