8/100
Where’s Grandpa?
Portrait by
Roni Liyanage
London
The moment when my daughter, Gaby, could embrace her grandmother, Teri, for the first time, together with her mother Vanessa, a month after her grandfather Kevin FitzGerald died from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) at the Royal Brompton Hospital on 19 April 2020. ‘Where’s Grandpa?’, they whispered as they cried. Then Gaby, without hesitation, smiled and pointed to the trees outside the window where he had spent his last weeks, comforted by the view of St Mary Abbots Church, where he had been baptised 66 years earlier. In this time of social distancing and lockdown, it is a hug between three generations collectively mourning the loss of a grandfather, father and husband.