Grandfathers and Grandmothers

I'm lucky to have been born with all four grandparents, in fact, until 2010 I still had all four grandparents, we only lost my great-grandmother when I was ten. When I was born, my grandparents were in their fifties, and not yet retired. My parents had me young, but not that young, and their parents did the same. Nan and Pop (mum's parents) only got married in 1955, mum was born in 1961. Grandma and Grandad (dad's parents) I'm not sure, but they'd had three other kids by the time dad was born in 1960. Grandad's around 84 now, grandma would have been 82 I think. Pop was born in 1931 so he's just turned 80, Nanna turns 75 this year. Funny how I don't know as much about one set of grandparents as the other, but things turn out that way sometimes. We were always more of a concern to Nan and Pop being the only grandchildren, where Grandma always seemed to have the rest of the grandkids on her mind more than us.
Anyway, in a peculiar way, since my grandparents were only middle aged when I was born, I've got to watch them grow old, while I've been growing up. And I think they have got old, mainly it's Poppy and Nanna that have - the inflexibility, the stubbornness, the nostalgia, the bewilderment that comes from the world leaving you behind is noticeable in them but wasn't in Grandma and Grandad. Maybe they were old before their time, and stayed that way, where Nanna and Pop, firmly middle class and still running a business til the mid 80's, still acting as treasurer/secretary to a variety of clubs even now, were younger once, I can remember not thinking of them as old. From what my mum and dad say, it seems that way to them too, especially for Pop.
He had a heart attack in 2009, perhaps what's been the change. Facing mortality, actual impairment, maybe. Pop had polio in the forties, but I think that was a time when disability was less taboo - he learned to cope with his leg in a time when people didn't make much fuss about it. But now, after coping for so long and never really seeing himself, in fact fighting the perception of himself, as an 'invalid', he's had to deal with being ill, with not being able to do what he used to do.
Maybe that's one thing that grandparents are able to do for those among us in this position, teach us how (or how not) to get old, help to deal with the fact of aging before actually having to go through the process.
Besides the great questions of life, living, aging and mortality, my grandparents have taught me a lot of things, even if the relationship (to the extent that I have/had them) have been rocky. My grandparents are interesting people who've had such a wide variety of life experiences, and remain to a lot of extent a mystery to me. On the one hand, I don't know if they'd be especially receptive to much talking about their selves and their minds, but on the other, the hints that I get from what they say and how they say it just intrigue me so much.
For example, two sayings of my grandad's: "You're not drunk til you're drunk enough to lay in the gutter and pull the water up over you like a blanket".  "Patience and Perseverance. You could get a pound of butter up the arse of a wild tom-cat using a hot sewing needle, as long as you have patience and perseverance". Where'd he learn them? To what situations, exactly, does he imagine these apply? No wonder my dad's such a funny bugger...he idolises his dad. My dad knew what he wanted to do with his life ever since he was little - he wanted to be a mechanic like his dad. So he went and did it, and works for the company that my grandad worked for, though, I think grandad had more of a managerial role. I think that might be why my dad's always been frustrated/confused/impatient with people who don't really know what they want, especially in relationship to jobs, but also to a lot of other things. My dad found what he wanted early -- he wanted to be a mechanic like his dad, so he went to tech school, did an apprenticeship, and got work as a mechanic at the mine. Him and my mum met when he was 18 and she 17, he liked her, and so they got together and then they got married. She was only his second girlfriend at all, and as far as I can understand, not much went on with the first. When my dad was my age, he had two children with the love of his life, was paying off a mortgage on a great house, had the job he always wanted. So I think that's why he can't understand why David and I just "can't get it together". Like all of the luckiest people, he has no idea he's lucky.