Recently my grandfather passed away. I’ve experienced bereavement before, even the suicide of a member of my extended family and I’ve been to plenty of funerals. Being an Aspie, logic tends to trump emotion when it comes to dealing with the loss. Long ago I learnt to accept that death is an inevitable part of life and that as in the case of my grandfather who had suffered from a severe illness for several years, it can be a release. Wherever he is now, he is free from the pain and suffering that plagued his last years. So logically, I should be happy for him right? Well yes, and yet no. Grandpa’s death really hurt me, I mean physically as well as mentally. We had been expecting it for years, and yet it was still a shock. I felt as if someone had swept the rug from under my feet. To me it represented a massive change in my life; it seemed as if things would never be the same again.
My relationship with my grandpa was one of the most stable in my life, out of my entire (and pretty large family) he was the only one who truly understood me, and it seemed that in turn I saw him differently to everyone else. We had one major aspect of our lives in common: we both had Aspergers. We also shared roughly the same special interests and could talk for hours. He was an incredible source of information and intelligence and had an almost encyclopaedic memory. I looked up to him and respected him more than anyone else in the world. It was from him that I inherited my gifts and whilst I also inherited the curse, I didn’t blame him. He suffered for his gifts too and I always believe that the gifts of Aspergers outweigh the curse.
He wasn’t diagnosed until well after me. My mum looked at me and all of my quirks, saw grandpa, put two and two together and suggested that he get checked. One of the greatest tragedies is that it was too late for him. You can’t cure Aspergers and even the treatments have limitations, but just knowing that you have it is the greatest remedy. In the past it was not something that was widely known about. A diagnosis was hard to come by, especially when you were an adult. Grandpa went through almost his entire life not knowing why he was different and being seen as very different by those around him. Without the coping strategies that are formulated for Aspies, he turned to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for relief. His OCD was worse than mine because he didn’t realise what it was and never had the access to therapy, medication and counselling that we have today. For these reasons his curse outweighed his vast gifts. I think that that is partly the reason why I felt his death so much. I was sad for him because he had the misfortune to be born in the wrong era. Today his gifts would have been nurtured whilst his curse was controlled. People are more accepting of Aspergers and the information and knowledge available about it is more extensive. I felt guilt too, because he was the greatest influence on my development as an individual, I owed him a lot; yet he missed out. I had also lost the one other person in the family who really understood me, who knew what I was going through. It hurts now, but I guess time heals all wounds. I will never forget him, but I hope that I will eventually be able to look back on his memory with pride and gladness, instead of pain and sorrow.
