YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi Family

I woke with a thought. A thought you may or may not wish to partake in. Oak was the inspiration for this topic.

If it wasn’t for………fill in with the following such a I am about too.

If it wasn’t for ……the Royal Navy and a murderer I wouldn’t be here.
Back many years ago my grandfather (Grampy) was part of the British Royal Navy. He was unable to read or write as his father died in the war after surviving the bombing and being gassed. His lungs were damaged and returned home only to die of a cold! Grampy was 7. He became the head of the family.
My Grampy left primary school to shoot rabbits to make money and put his sisters through teaching collage. His mother did the best she could.
Once he joined the navy he was send to New Zealand.
On shore he meet my Nana at the local and love took hold. My Nana was truly beautiful and also suffering from the ailments of osteomyelitis in her legs. Penicillin had been given to her in its infancy and saved her life. If it wasn’t for penicillin I wouldn’t be here.
My grandfather saw past the scars and loved her for the fact she still danced, played spots and laughed a lot!
He decided to jump ship and run away with her.
He was captured and sent back to the UK to serve sentence. He charmed his way out of this sentence and joined a ship set for New Zealand.
Little did he know the crew were leaving the UK for themselves to avoid capture after committing a murder.
Grampy came to New Zealand yet again and married my beautiful Nana. The had three children with only two surviving the birth. My mum, and my uncle Mike.

If it wasn’t for the emotion of love, lust and adventure I wouldn’t be here.
If it wasn’t for Grampy you would not be reading this. And we would never of had the honour of helping each other.

So cheers to love. Cheers to emotions no matter how broken they make us.
Personally I would like to think we are more beautiful and real than most. Like the art of kintsugi. (Look it up) where something broken is it back together bit by bit with gold.

You all individually are gold. Slowly we piece ourselves together with the help of others. The end result may take some time. It may take decades or it may take a lifetime. But the end result is your individual beauty and kindness.

If it wasn’t for you all I wouldn’t be here.

What a wonderful story, Mental Fairy!

Agreed with our dear friend Manuel Moe: this is very lovely. Thank you so much, Mental Fairy, for saying this.

I was having an exhausting, sad day. I felt like everything had been drained out of me. Then I read this lovely post, and I felt human again.

I'm pleased that both of our grandfathers had pluck and verve and fight. Both had missing father figures, and made difficult choices in the inter-war period that reverberate-positively!- to this very day.

I'd love to hear more about Grampy. Feel free to share all the details you like, though I know people back then were circumspect about sharing (often for good reason: trauma was mocked back then!).

oak wrote: ↑June 21st, 2022, 4:37 pm I was having an exhausting, sad day. I felt like everything had been drained out of me. Then I read this lovely post, and I felt human again.

A wonderful effect caused by Mental Fairy's writing

Grampy.
Cheeky and truly wonderful man.
Stories to come!

Mental Fairy wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2022, 3:09 pm Stories to come!

I’ll look forward to them!

Sit a while and image this!

Grampy had a tan Toyota Ute with a canopy. He carried tins of paint from job to job. Once he get onshore he was unable to sail again. All loved up and newly married he started his own painting business. Unable to read well or write well he had my Nana doing the paperwork!

This Ute he drove was famous in our then little township of Paratutu. Why, because he was a shocking driver that’s why! He always drove along and put his seatbelt on a kilometre down the road, one hand on the wheel while he reaches around. If there was a passenger then they would slide along the seat on every bend.
Music pumping out of old jazz and blues!
Paint tins would fall over and dribble along the floor and on every road with a gradient paint would trail along behind the van.
If you wanted to know where his next job was then follow the lines leading to the next destination.

On one occasion he had to drop me at high school about 2km away from home. As usual we would leave with handfuls of nana’s baking and packed lunches under the arms. Go into the van on this particular day and reverse out the drive. Got to the corner and for some reason the horns starts honking by itself. This thing didn’t stop, one long consistent honking. All the way to school. He never stopped just banded on the centre wheel to try get it to release! Alas we roll up to my high school with this beeping horn that was stuck and his music going to try drown out the noise.
I scramble to get out of the van and beg him to leave immediately but in his Yorkshire way he rushed to open the door for me and gave me a massive hug and wishes me a good day G’s. That was my nickname.
As humiliating as it was and as funny as it is now I would give anything to hear that horn again and feel that hug!

Oh Oak my husband wanted me to tell you a story about Grampy you might find amusing.

Being a Yorkshire man through and through Grampy and Nana would return to England for six months of every year to see the family and land.

One particular year Grampy decided to bury his money along with other things in the garden as he trusted no one. Not even the bank! He was known to do this yearly but never in the garden.

So with this is mind, Grampy has a massive garden. Greenhouse full of tropical fruits and tomatoes. Lines of all vegetables you can image in the other part of the garden and roses absolutely everywhere. Our family flower is the Yorkshire rose.
Grampy got a lock box and put all the money in there in New Zealand currently that wasn’t needed on this trip for transfer into pounds.

They had a great trip and as usual I would go meet them at the airport on their return with my mother and whatever boyfriend she had at the time.
Got back home and unpacking begun. Grampy went into the garden to dig up his belongings hidden from any bad people whom might see the house empty for half the year and use that time to clean them out.
Grampy did a fine job of cleaning himself out as he forgot where in the garden his things were!
We spent ages digging and never did find the bounty!
Fast forward many years and still no treasure found, the house became to big for them in their ageing years. The home was sold and they moved on.
Many years later my husband and I would have the opportunity to buy the home back and wished to restore it. However, we got to the open home and expected to see the back garden in all its beauty but no, the past owners tore out the beautiful gardens and poured concrete over it!

To this day I drive past this home several times a month and shake my head in amusement and Grampy never got upset over it, not once.
He famously kept saying to us kids, ‘you never see a hearse towing a trailer.’