Sept. 25: Grandparents
My father is on the record
saying that he did not have a happy childhood. He grew up in a home with
an alcoholic father who likely resented his family for forcing him to
work a nowhere job at a grocery store. Once he was so angry that he
locked his wife and two sons out of the house for hours. It was cold and
granddad wouldn't allow them inside until much later.
Grandma never learned to drive. I wonder if my grandfather discouraged it so that she couldn't runaway.
-
Listen:
I got to grow up believing my paternal grandparents were wonderful people, that there had never been any animosity between my dad and my grandpa. I remember the time I spent at their house with great fondness. They had a swing in the basement, which also featured a toilet in one corner (there were no walls, just a toilet.) There was a box full of toys and one of the toys was a miniature roulette wheel.
There was also a slide projector. My grandma used to be a real shutterbug and, when we were kids, she would treat us to “picture nights.” Picture night consisted of us sitting on the couch, watching endless reels of us when we were “littler.”
The funniest picture shows me and grandad sleeping in bed side-by-side. I was a baby. I had a pacifier in my mouth. My grandad snored beside me.
His mouth was open.
-
Grandma's nickname for me was Pride and Joy. She had similar nicknames for my two siblings.
The nickname used to embarrass me,particularly when she used it around my friends, but I no longer resent her for it. She was an old lady who was filled with love.
-
My paternal grandparents lived across the country in Ontario. My maternal grandparents lived next door in Saskatchewan. We saw our maternal grandparents at least twice a year. We always went to the cottage in the summer. Grandad had a boat and he would take us water skiing and fishing. Sometimes we'd go out in the boat and watch the July 1 fireworks from the middle of Jackfish Lake.
Both of them used to smoke. Then my grandad quit and my grandma quit shortly after. My mother told her I should congratulate her because it was hard to give up smoking. So I did.
“Thank you,” grandma said.
-
My maternal grandmother used to make her own cigarettes. She used a beige plastic machine, which she would stuff with tobacco. I used to like the smell of that raw tobacco. It smelled like grapes. Then she would put a small paper tube in the machine and pull the lever and there would be a loud clicking sound and then she'd have a cigarette.
-
My maternal grandparents lived in a big country house near Rosetown, Saskatchewan. I used to sleep in my mother's old bedroom upstairs. One day, I discovered a small door behind the bed. Being the curious Frank-and-Joe-Hardy sort, I pushed the bed away so I could open that door. Behind it was an alcove stuffed with treasures. One of the treasures was a violin. I brought it downstairs and my mother got angry at me. She told me it was rude to go rummaging through my grandparents' house.
I thought grandma would be angry but she wasn't. She hugged me and she dried my tears and she said that everything was just fine. “You're just a curious boy,” she said.“And after all, it is grandma's house.”
-
Later that night, grandad played his violin. A few years ago, there was a picture of him in his hometown newspaper playing the violin.
I'd like to think I played a small role in that.
-
My maternal grandfather liked to sit next to me at the dinner table.
Once we went driving in Rosetown and he showed me places he remembered from when he was a younger man. We went to a mall and he asked me if he could buy me something. He said the only thing he wouldn't buy me was a toy. I didn't need anything.Eventually, I let him buy me some shoe polish.
When he and grandma celebrated their50th wedding anniversary a few years later,I used it to shine my shoes.
-
My paternal grandmother visited us maybe once a year. She always brought presents. Once she brought us two plastic tennis racquets with a foam ball. My brother and I played with them in the family room and then we got bored of them after a couple minutes and we never played with them again. Once she gave me five crisp one dollar bills and told me to use them to buy anything I wanted. I used them to buy a book about Karate.
She was also a whiz at knitting.Every year, she would knit me a sweater. She had arthritis. She knit them anyway. How's that for love?
-
My paternal grandmother didn't have an easy life. She lost her teeth when she was very young. Her father either abandoned his family or died when she was very young. Her mother married another man and grandma refused to call him “dad.”When she was a little girl, she got a part in her church's Christmas pageant. Her line was “and the ass stuck his head out the window.”Grandma didn't want to use that word. She didn't think it was appropriate. The director told her she could change the line to “and the donkey stuck his head out the window.”
Come performance night, grandma took centre stage and, with hundreds of eyes upon her, said: “And the donkey stuck his ass out the window.”
-
She had plenty of stories. They were stories she told over and over again.
They were stories about things that affected her very deeply and she hadn't dealt with them yet.
One of the stories was about a mean paperboy who kept throwing her newspaper in the garden. She chastised him once and asked him to start putting the paper on the front step.The next morning, she found her paper in the garden and spit running down her screen door.
But the story I heard the most was the one about a visit I had with her when I was three years old. I guess she was pampering me pretty good because at one point, I asked why she was being so good to me and she replied “I don't know. Maybe because I love you so much.”
Confession: Grandma told that story to everyone she met. One day when she was visiting us, I heard her tell it at least a dozen times. I hated hearing that story but I loved my grandma too much to tell her to stop.
-
Both my grandmothers are dead now.
My paternal grandmother passed away in Calgary about seven years ago. She lived the last years of her life in the very retirement home where my father, her son, serves as chaplain. She was a stubborn sort. After her husband passed away in1996, she kept on living in her house on Alexander Blvd, refusing pleas to move to a nursing home. My uncle lived only a couple blocks away and I daresay he spent much of his adult life serving as her chauffeur. One day in 2005, my girlfriend and I took my grandmother and my uncle for breakfast. My uncle had adopted a strategy when it came to dealing with his aging mother – it was to agree eagerly with everything she said. When grandma complained that the roads were too congested, my uncle would say: “They sure are. I think that everyone should just stay home whenever you want to go for a ride.”
And grandma would agree.
-
My father officiated over his own mother's wedding. He didn't cry. He didn't even seem close to crying.
At the funeral, I learned one thing about my grandma, something that no one ever told me. It was something I wished she shared with me.
I could have had an aunt. Before her two boys were born, she had a daughter. The daughter died when she was just an infant.
My dad used to say he had a sister named Apple Pie.
And so that dead baby is known as Apple Pie.
-
My maternal grandmother passed away in February of 2011 after a long battle with Alzheimer's. The funeral was held at the Catholic church. I stood beside my sister. When she started to cry, I side-hugged her and kissed her cheek and felt more like a big brother than I'd ever felt in my life.
At the reception, my mother and her two sisters paid tribute to grandma, My grandad made it clear that he only wanted his girls to speak.
After the service, some strong men loaded grandma's casket into the back of the Hearse. The entire extended family gathered on the steps of the Catholic church to watch it drive away. I was at the front. My family was behind me. What I remember most about that day were the two words, spoken with great sadness, by my Aunt Sandra, who I had never seen cry.
Those two words were these:
“Goodbye, mom.”
-
When I was in Grade 8, I made a knife rack for my maternal grandmother. I made it in the woodshop class at St. Augustin Junior High School. I glued a picture of an otter to the front of it and then I glazed it so that when you ran your fingers over that picture, it felt like it was part of the rack.
Grandma was very touched that I gave the knife rack to her and she honoured my request to hang it in the kitchen of the cottage at Jackfish Lake.
Seeing it still made me happy when I last visited the cottage when I was 26.
-
My paternal grandmother had a small clock that she wore on a chain around her neck. My favourite thing to do was turn that clock around. Grandma pretended to be annoyed. She wasn't though.
When she passed away, I received a cheque for about $200.
“Your grandma's sorry,” my dad said. “She really wished it could have been more.”
That made me sad. I really hope grandma didn't live out her days thinking of herself as a failure.
-
She loved to tell stories, my paternal grandmother. In most of her stories, she was the hero. The story always started with someone refusing to take her advice, only to find the situation blowing up in their faces. Later, the unhappy person would come back to my grandma and say: "I should have listened to you. You were right."
Really what she was saying was this; "I am alive. I have worth. Please respect me."
-
Listen:
There is a cork board beside my front door. On it are tacked things that make me happy. There are pictures of people I care about. There are mementoes from places my friends have been.
There is a letter from my grandfather. He is congratulating me for winning a playwrighting competition and telling me that “books are some of God's happiest gifts.”
I like that.
-
It was August when I got the news that my paternal grandmother had died. My mother called me from Calgary to tell me the news. I asked how dad was doing. She said he was doing fine. She asked me if I would fly to Calgary for the funeral and I said that I would.
My friend, Lee, was visiting at the time. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that my grandmother had died. She asked if I was okay and I said that I was fine. I wasn't going to cry and I never did cry over my departed paternal grandmother. That made me feel bad.
Lee told me not to feel that way.She said that people grieve in different ways.
I said that I had a picture of my grandmother somewhere. I found it and showed it to her.
She didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything to say.
It's impossible to say anything profound in the presence of death.
The Talmud says there is only one appropriate thing to say when one is in the presence of grief.
It is nothing.
Nothing at all.
-
When I was two, my paternal grandfather spilled a whole pitcher of orange juice on his pants. He was livid and probably would have cursed a blue streak.
But he didn't. That's because I found it funny.
I guess I laughed pretty hard and grandad laughed pretty hard too and the day of the spilled orange juice became a touchstone between us for the rest of his life.
-
You know that letter I was telling you about? The one my granddad wrote me?
As an afterthought, he had scribbled four words besides the block of prose that made up the greater part of his missive. Those words were this: REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES.
I always wondered why he wrote that.Maybe he suspected that he was not the best father to my dad and had been trying to redeem himself by being a good grandfather to the three of us. Or maybe he just wanted me to remember the good times,to remember that I had a granddad in Ontario who loved me.
-
Listen:
The happiest days of my paternal grandmother's life were the days when she received letters from her grandchildren. She would often complain that we never wrote; it was a complaint that was valid. I guess when you're 17 and you have malls to visit and movies to see and friends to hang out with and girls to chase and homework to do and zits to fret over, you sometimes forget about how lonely your grandparents are.
If they're still alive, call them.
Call them.
-
The big country house near Rosetown and the cottage at the lake are no longer the property of anyone in my family.
But I have it on good authority that my knife rack still hangs in that cottage and that the new owners use it and this makes me happy and I think it would have made grandma happy too.
Grandma never learned to drive. I wonder if my grandfather discouraged it so that she couldn't runaway.
-
Listen:
I got to grow up believing my paternal grandparents were wonderful people, that there had never been any animosity between my dad and my grandpa. I remember the time I spent at their house with great fondness. They had a swing in the basement, which also featured a toilet in one corner (there were no walls, just a toilet.) There was a box full of toys and one of the toys was a miniature roulette wheel.
There was also a slide projector. My grandma used to be a real shutterbug and, when we were kids, she would treat us to “picture nights.” Picture night consisted of us sitting on the couch, watching endless reels of us when we were “littler.”
The funniest picture shows me and grandad sleeping in bed side-by-side. I was a baby. I had a pacifier in my mouth. My grandad snored beside me.
His mouth was open.
-
Grandma's nickname for me was Pride and Joy. She had similar nicknames for my two siblings.
The nickname used to embarrass me,particularly when she used it around my friends, but I no longer resent her for it. She was an old lady who was filled with love.
-
My paternal grandparents lived across the country in Ontario. My maternal grandparents lived next door in Saskatchewan. We saw our maternal grandparents at least twice a year. We always went to the cottage in the summer. Grandad had a boat and he would take us water skiing and fishing. Sometimes we'd go out in the boat and watch the July 1 fireworks from the middle of Jackfish Lake.
Both of them used to smoke. Then my grandad quit and my grandma quit shortly after. My mother told her I should congratulate her because it was hard to give up smoking. So I did.
“Thank you,” grandma said.
-
My maternal grandmother used to make her own cigarettes. She used a beige plastic machine, which she would stuff with tobacco. I used to like the smell of that raw tobacco. It smelled like grapes. Then she would put a small paper tube in the machine and pull the lever and there would be a loud clicking sound and then she'd have a cigarette.
-
My maternal grandparents lived in a big country house near Rosetown, Saskatchewan. I used to sleep in my mother's old bedroom upstairs. One day, I discovered a small door behind the bed. Being the curious Frank-and-Joe-Hardy sort, I pushed the bed away so I could open that door. Behind it was an alcove stuffed with treasures. One of the treasures was a violin. I brought it downstairs and my mother got angry at me. She told me it was rude to go rummaging through my grandparents' house.
I thought grandma would be angry but she wasn't. She hugged me and she dried my tears and she said that everything was just fine. “You're just a curious boy,” she said.“And after all, it is grandma's house.”
-
Later that night, grandad played his violin. A few years ago, there was a picture of him in his hometown newspaper playing the violin.
I'd like to think I played a small role in that.
-
My maternal grandfather liked to sit next to me at the dinner table.
Once we went driving in Rosetown and he showed me places he remembered from when he was a younger man. We went to a mall and he asked me if he could buy me something. He said the only thing he wouldn't buy me was a toy. I didn't need anything.Eventually, I let him buy me some shoe polish.
When he and grandma celebrated their50th wedding anniversary a few years later,I used it to shine my shoes.
-
My paternal grandmother visited us maybe once a year. She always brought presents. Once she brought us two plastic tennis racquets with a foam ball. My brother and I played with them in the family room and then we got bored of them after a couple minutes and we never played with them again. Once she gave me five crisp one dollar bills and told me to use them to buy anything I wanted. I used them to buy a book about Karate.
She was also a whiz at knitting.Every year, she would knit me a sweater. She had arthritis. She knit them anyway. How's that for love?
-
My paternal grandmother didn't have an easy life. She lost her teeth when she was very young. Her father either abandoned his family or died when she was very young. Her mother married another man and grandma refused to call him “dad.”When she was a little girl, she got a part in her church's Christmas pageant. Her line was “and the ass stuck his head out the window.”Grandma didn't want to use that word. She didn't think it was appropriate. The director told her she could change the line to “and the donkey stuck his head out the window.”
Come performance night, grandma took centre stage and, with hundreds of eyes upon her, said: “And the donkey stuck his ass out the window.”
-
She had plenty of stories. They were stories she told over and over again.
They were stories about things that affected her very deeply and she hadn't dealt with them yet.
One of the stories was about a mean paperboy who kept throwing her newspaper in the garden. She chastised him once and asked him to start putting the paper on the front step.The next morning, she found her paper in the garden and spit running down her screen door.
But the story I heard the most was the one about a visit I had with her when I was three years old. I guess she was pampering me pretty good because at one point, I asked why she was being so good to me and she replied “I don't know. Maybe because I love you so much.”
Confession: Grandma told that story to everyone she met. One day when she was visiting us, I heard her tell it at least a dozen times. I hated hearing that story but I loved my grandma too much to tell her to stop.
-
Both my grandmothers are dead now.
My paternal grandmother passed away in Calgary about seven years ago. She lived the last years of her life in the very retirement home where my father, her son, serves as chaplain. She was a stubborn sort. After her husband passed away in1996, she kept on living in her house on Alexander Blvd, refusing pleas to move to a nursing home. My uncle lived only a couple blocks away and I daresay he spent much of his adult life serving as her chauffeur. One day in 2005, my girlfriend and I took my grandmother and my uncle for breakfast. My uncle had adopted a strategy when it came to dealing with his aging mother – it was to agree eagerly with everything she said. When grandma complained that the roads were too congested, my uncle would say: “They sure are. I think that everyone should just stay home whenever you want to go for a ride.”
And grandma would agree.
-
My father officiated over his own mother's wedding. He didn't cry. He didn't even seem close to crying.
At the funeral, I learned one thing about my grandma, something that no one ever told me. It was something I wished she shared with me.
I could have had an aunt. Before her two boys were born, she had a daughter. The daughter died when she was just an infant.
My dad used to say he had a sister named Apple Pie.
And so that dead baby is known as Apple Pie.
-
My maternal grandmother passed away in February of 2011 after a long battle with Alzheimer's. The funeral was held at the Catholic church. I stood beside my sister. When she started to cry, I side-hugged her and kissed her cheek and felt more like a big brother than I'd ever felt in my life.
At the reception, my mother and her two sisters paid tribute to grandma, My grandad made it clear that he only wanted his girls to speak.
After the service, some strong men loaded grandma's casket into the back of the Hearse. The entire extended family gathered on the steps of the Catholic church to watch it drive away. I was at the front. My family was behind me. What I remember most about that day were the two words, spoken with great sadness, by my Aunt Sandra, who I had never seen cry.
Those two words were these:
“Goodbye, mom.”
-
When I was in Grade 8, I made a knife rack for my maternal grandmother. I made it in the woodshop class at St. Augustin Junior High School. I glued a picture of an otter to the front of it and then I glazed it so that when you ran your fingers over that picture, it felt like it was part of the rack.
Grandma was very touched that I gave the knife rack to her and she honoured my request to hang it in the kitchen of the cottage at Jackfish Lake.
Seeing it still made me happy when I last visited the cottage when I was 26.
-
My paternal grandmother had a small clock that she wore on a chain around her neck. My favourite thing to do was turn that clock around. Grandma pretended to be annoyed. She wasn't though.
When she passed away, I received a cheque for about $200.
“Your grandma's sorry,” my dad said. “She really wished it could have been more.”
That made me sad. I really hope grandma didn't live out her days thinking of herself as a failure.
-
She loved to tell stories, my paternal grandmother. In most of her stories, she was the hero. The story always started with someone refusing to take her advice, only to find the situation blowing up in their faces. Later, the unhappy person would come back to my grandma and say: "I should have listened to you. You were right."
Really what she was saying was this; "I am alive. I have worth. Please respect me."
-
Listen:
There is a cork board beside my front door. On it are tacked things that make me happy. There are pictures of people I care about. There are mementoes from places my friends have been.
There is a letter from my grandfather. He is congratulating me for winning a playwrighting competition and telling me that “books are some of God's happiest gifts.”
I like that.
-
It was August when I got the news that my paternal grandmother had died. My mother called me from Calgary to tell me the news. I asked how dad was doing. She said he was doing fine. She asked me if I would fly to Calgary for the funeral and I said that I would.
My friend, Lee, was visiting at the time. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that my grandmother had died. She asked if I was okay and I said that I was fine. I wasn't going to cry and I never did cry over my departed paternal grandmother. That made me feel bad.
Lee told me not to feel that way.She said that people grieve in different ways.
I said that I had a picture of my grandmother somewhere. I found it and showed it to her.
She didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything to say.
It's impossible to say anything profound in the presence of death.
The Talmud says there is only one appropriate thing to say when one is in the presence of grief.
It is nothing.
Nothing at all.
-
When I was two, my paternal grandfather spilled a whole pitcher of orange juice on his pants. He was livid and probably would have cursed a blue streak.
But he didn't. That's because I found it funny.
I guess I laughed pretty hard and grandad laughed pretty hard too and the day of the spilled orange juice became a touchstone between us for the rest of his life.
-
You know that letter I was telling you about? The one my granddad wrote me?
As an afterthought, he had scribbled four words besides the block of prose that made up the greater part of his missive. Those words were this: REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES.
I always wondered why he wrote that.Maybe he suspected that he was not the best father to my dad and had been trying to redeem himself by being a good grandfather to the three of us. Or maybe he just wanted me to remember the good times,to remember that I had a granddad in Ontario who loved me.
-
Listen:
The happiest days of my paternal grandmother's life were the days when she received letters from her grandchildren. She would often complain that we never wrote; it was a complaint that was valid. I guess when you're 17 and you have malls to visit and movies to see and friends to hang out with and girls to chase and homework to do and zits to fret over, you sometimes forget about how lonely your grandparents are.
If they're still alive, call them.
Call them.
-
The big country house near Rosetown and the cottage at the lake are no longer the property of anyone in my family.
But I have it on good authority that my knife rack still hangs in that cottage and that the new owners use it and this makes me happy and I think it would have made grandma happy too.
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