Grandparents

You are both talking to me ,trying to both grab my attention, my Nan on her latest hat, my Grandad on his latest drawings, and I smile and pretend to be listening, but really I'm just wondering where have you gone.
My grandmother strong feisty Welsh women, who once out of pure love for me pinned the school bully up by her hair and very impolitely told her to leave me alone.
My grandad soft and gentle man, creative and artistic just looking for a quiet life. He shared his passion for books and writing and 1940s films with me. But now looking at them They had both seemed to have disappeared. My Nan was now frail and white the spark in her eyes had now disappeared with the years.
The world had become a scary place, and she was confined in a prison she called her home, with fears of dying in her sleep or collapsing in the streets.
But my grandad still soft and gentle and as creative as he ever was, was now shaking erratically with Parkinson unsteady on his feet and chocking with the slightest drop of tea where the muscles in his throat and withered away, but he was still shining, his personality still strong; it was his body that was failing him fading away quicker than his mind.
so I feel the tears arrive in my eyes that the two of the most important people of my childhood would probably soon be leaving me. Why didn't I notice or see even a sign that age had crawled all through their body taking away their mind or even there soul. So I refocus my eyes and shine my smile wide, hope you don't notice the fear and or the worry that arrived though my body, and how much time I have left with the two people that made my childhood, protected and encourage me and never judge me on my teenage mistakes. How I will miss them when they are gone, and how In twenty years I will be looking at my own parents with these scary thoughts, wondering where the time has gone how life had seemed to weep away from them.