My next cat will be named Gordon

For the past two months (almost) all I've wanted to do was lie on the floor. To just get up, wherever it is that I am, and lie on the floor. To inhale deeply and lift some sort of weight off my chest.

Obviously I haven't been able to actually live this fantasy, but the idea of it has become some sort of obsession that gets me through the day somehow. Like any human, creative or not, I have the potential to feel things intensely - to let one emotion send me into some sort of coma.

On the 17th January, I lost my Grandad, Alfred Gordon Hollins. Although this blog is only in existence for the purposes of my course, I feel like this loss has stunted my creativity immensely. This being worrying enough, I have to deal with not being the emotional crutch of so many of the people who I love the most and care for the deepest.

I've never been aware of the loss of life before, with my time consciously aware of my relationships with the people I've grown up with being fairly cushioned and lossless. I had already lost my Grandma, before my existence was even contemplated, again on the 17th, but of May. I was to be born a year later on the 10th May, being the only Hollins girl to be produced by their 2 sons and 2 daughters. It was the lack of my Grandma that made my relationship with my Grandad grounded by sympathy. The older I grew, the more my heart ached for a man who's own heart ached for 20 years.

Visiting his house, you'd almost step back in time. The aesthetic as a collective, felt like the 60's had never happened, and life in the 50's was eternal. Hexagon mirrors with a thin gold chain hung above a mantelpiece cluttered in family portraits. The window sills lined with plants, ones which I swear he never watered but somehow managed to survive. Cassettes everywhere, video tapes much to the same degree of impressive quantity. The carpet almost looked like an illusion, with squiggly lines placed in such a way that if you got too close or stared for too long you'd go cross eyed. Grandma's chair, in which he would apparently record her nearly falling into the fire poker when nodding off. The wire case that surrounded the fire. The fire that was always lit. The garden was like something I'd imagine to exist in Narnia, getting lost in the Date bushes and peering over fences to spot the annually returning fox and waiting for her cubs. And my favourite part? The bathroom. He had a pink bath tub, pink walls and the scent of a woman and her talcum powder.

Gordon spent his younger years in the RAF. Accumulating hand books from many different countries, he had so many stories to tell. His fascination with planes almost became hereditary as I had to deal with being dragged to airshows for most of my childhood by my Dad, aunties and uncle. Trains also came into the mix, and I don't think I'll ever be able to look at steam train without thinking of him. The smell, the way that his cardigans would often match the interior of the carriages. It was all a bit of a laugh.

With all these vehicles of travel, he was quite the adventurer. He had 91 years of an intensely fulfilled life. The things he'd seen, the places he'd known, gives us all that same thirst for life. You would not see him without a camera around his neck, recording every adventure no matter how small. I'll always remember his hugs by the seaside, his somewhat stern yet humble laugh, his magic card trick in the caravan, the crease of his brow resting on the back of his abnormally thick prescription glasses.

I miss him, but the old him. Alzheimer's is a crippling disease, for all who are involved. He became less reserved, less serious with it, but the confusion was painful to watch. He was, at times, mentally in a happy place - memories of my Grandma, my Great Auntie Peg and simply the passing of white horses, or the idea that I was his Australian wife, Meg. But I wanted to be his granddaughter, quite desperately. I'd play with his hair for some sort of recognition, and the last time I saw him I played with his hair for what felt like forever. The parting words were 'Eh, Happy New Year'

and a Happy New Year to you Grandad. 2017 may not have been ready for you, but I will spend every year thinking of you and I can't tell you how relieved I am that you're now home, with Grandma.