They show me flowers. Some are shaped into leters, others are simple shapes. All of the bouquets are brightly coloured, all of the bouquets are beautiful. Oranges, yellows, pinks, whites, blues - they all flourish in the gentle light of the sun. Each individual flower is delicate and composed, I am unable to find a single fault in any of them. Having these photographs pushed into my face wasn't exactly how I imagined my day going.  I had imagined my day as being a lot easier. I don't want to look at those photographs; I never have, and I probably never will. Still, I sit there, enduring them, trying to find a way of blocking them out.

Eventually, I stare at them until my vision goes blurry. It becomes a struggle not to blink. In my determination to block them out, I continue to stare at them until there are just circles of colour surrounded by a green background.

"You got him these," my grandma says, pointing at a bouquet of yellow flowers and snapping me out of my delicious delirium.

I remain absolutely, stubbornly silent. I know that I always have to be polite. Really, in my head, I am madly screaming in denial of every word. I didn't pay for those flowers. I didn't pick out those flowers. I wasn't even there to see them laid upon the ground. I'm almost guiltily glad that my parents had changed the decision to give me the choice on whether or not to go. I'm almost glad that instead of spending the day with them, I spent it locked inside my school.

My grandma begins to tell me about who each bouquet was from. In my head, I'm screaming shut up, repeatedly. I have always hated this subject. My method of coping was to try and forget. To block out every ounce of pain. Apparently, other people have different ideas and, instead, face it. I'm not brave enough to do that. I'm relieved as they stop showing me flowers. I'm also all too aware that flowers have now been eternially ruined for me. Flowers, which were once so pretty, now hold a more dreaded memory. Thinking about how difficult this is for me, I wonder how everyone else is still standing. It just doesn't seem possible.

Now, they face me with a photograph of him. The pains in the pit of my stomach have multiplied by a thousand. He looks a little different; the photograph was taken a few years before. My grandma scrolls through a few other photos of him and I can't help but think about how innocent he looks. Tears fill my eyes suddenly but I can't, won't, let anyone see them. Along with a sense of longing, I feel guilt and regret.

We were never especially close. We never exchanged very many words. Maybe we did when I was younger; I don't know, I don't remember. Now I've found your old vinyl records and FIFA games, I realise that we probably had a lot more in common than we both had thought. I wonder, if I had discovered these things earlier, would we have been close?

"Are you okay?" Those three simple words keep running through my mind. It's something that he always used to ask me. It's something that I answered to but never asked back. And now I can't. I remember my conversation with my cousin about how it was clear that he was never going to get better and that he had been so terribly poorly in those last few weeks. I never noticed.

Maybe my ignorance is the reason for my exclusion. I wasn't trusted. I wasn't a proper part of this family. I wasn't thought or cared about enough to be told that he had lung cancer. Even afterwards, it was kept from me. My age is no excuse either - my cousin is only about two years older than I am, and she clearly knew. She was there, in the hospital, with him as his life drained away.

I have to admit, I really had taken him for granted when he was here. I never made a good enough effort. Entering, my grandma's living room and seeing his empty space on the sofa, I feel the real impact. The missing piece. When someone - anyone - sits in that seat, I get overwhelmed with an irrational anger. The same weird mixture of anger and sadness, that I feel when someone brings him up.

I'm angry at everyone. I'm even partly angry at him. The smoking must have contributed to the slow deterioration of his health.

Dragging myself away from my selfish, bitter thoughts, I contemplate how it must have felt. Death isn't really something that you can imagine all that well. The part that I always picture, though, is my grandpa on his hospital bed, connected to multiple machines via wires. A mask on his mouth, nurses surrounding him as his heart rate slowed. I always wonder how it was for him. I wonder what his thoughts were, in those last few seconds, as he realised he was about to die.

This experience has bought me closer to death; for the first few days afterwards, it was all I could think about. I still think about dying constantly and now I am not so keen on books and films relating to death or the underworld. I'm improving. Gradually. Nothing's the same. I don't know if it ever will be. But it will be okay. I even carry a photograph of him around with me now.