A great-uncle I was never allowed to meet died a couple week ago.
That's nearly everybody from my mum's side, which is bittersweet. I know she only kept me away from them for my own good, because some of them were admittedly really horrid people, but there also feels like a big hole that I can't even talk about around my mum.

As the only heir (ha ha, nothing to inherit but debts), my mum is finally free of the obligation to be a carer now that they're dead. I'm happy to see her being freed of responsibility and guilt, which in a way cancels out the regret that I didn't get to know all of them very well.

Her brother died a couple years ago, and I never saw him once until I was 18. Then he took me to Coney Island in New York and I broke years of vegetarianism to have a hot dog. He was trying to learn photography so he took pictures of me looking really awkward on the beach. The next time I saw him was two years later, in a casket, dead of multiple cancers. His drunken friends ruined the funeral by insulting the priest's accent.

My mum's father died either when I was 9 or 12. He fell down the steps in front of our house when I was nine and went into a coma that lasted three and a half years. I have one really good memory of him, and it's doing Polish folk dance with him when I was about five years old. I was grumpy and sweaty and this festival but he was able to coax me into a polka.

As for my dad's side, I grew up around them so it was really tough when my grandfather died a couple years ago. He pretty much sacrificed everything so that my dad could get a quality education, which is what enabled me to live a good life. I would not be where I am were it not for my grandad having scrimped and saved every penny, even after he was crippled by polio, so that when my dad had the opportunity to go to an excellent university there was money for him to do so. He was brilliant. At his funeral, I made the decision to disown my only two first cousins for the disrespect they showed, not realise that they owed everything to that man. I don't regret that decision at all.
( KersaI Missive Free Michael Shields! with Monday's Liverpool Echo, Tue 11 Mar 2008, 22:00, archived)