The day after my grandpa died, I googled him. Ours was not a close relationship, and most of what we knew of each other was relayed to us by family members. Once the jitters of shock had faded I found an emptiness where grief was supposed to be, and so I went searching for pieces of him. His Wikipedia page (an unusual thing among grandparents) gave away little. He was an architect – this much I knew; many of my family are – and he designed brutalist buildings in the Sixties and Seventies that people tend not to speak of kindly. There was nothing of the man behind the concrete.
The lives of grandparents and parents before we interrupted them are endlessly captivating: where they danced, what they dreamed, who they loved. We cannot imagine their existence before us, but it is thrilling to try. Then, when they are gone, there is a sadness in the things you never asked, the minutiae lost. For me, the urge is deeper and more complicated.
Content from our partners
