I Never Loved my Grandfather.
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I never loved my Grandfather in the way I think most grandfathers secretly want their little granddaughters to.
As a small child my earliest memories of him were of a blue-eyed man who laughed under his breath and teased me a lot. I think he loved to hear me yell at him for pulling my hair, or calling me Calista (the way he said it rhymed with Melissa). The louder I yelled, the more the corners of his eyes would crinkle up in the ever growing tight-lipped grin that pruned his face.
My memories of his scent is always mixed; not quite right. There was aftershave, soap, that undeniable old person smell that I cannot describe very well—it wasn’t too unpleasant, more like dust warmed by sunshine with the faintest trace of something else my young mind could not comprehend. I didn’t know what that scent hiding behind his grandfather-smell was. It was something he carried with him for as long as I knew him, but back then I didn’t bother trying to find out what it was.
When I was very young, he’d always get up to leave in the middle of things. He’d say, “I’m going to the barn to make sure there aren’t any bears in there,” and, “I’m going hunting for baby-bunting.” And as a child, I always thought that was exactly what he was doing as he arose and meandered off in uneven patterns outside.
I wasn’t enlightened to the reason behind my grandfather’s wandering ways until I hit the age of thirteen—maybe fourteen. He went out to the barn, or out back in the trees behind the house to hide his drinking from me and the family who already knew what he was doing. I don’t think he truly believed he was hiding it from his wife, my Grandmother nor my mother nor our entire family. In fact, in hind sight, I think our entire town was well aware of what my grandfather was doing and what he was: he was an alcoholic.
No one talked about these things where I grew up, however, in a sleepy little farming town of Aylesford, Nova Scotia. It just wasn’t the thing to do. You never talked about the neighbor who beat his wife, or the neighbors kids that did drugs and you certainly never talked about alcoholism.
I can’t say that in the early years I thought anything was wrong with our family life. All that I knew were the things my parents and my grandparents taught me. My world started and ended with them, so whatever they did and said around me or to me was normal for me. I assumed all grand kids’ had a grandfather that smelled a little funny and couldn’t really walk very straight—or who liked to go out to the barn several times a day.
Things changed as I grew up. I realized obviously, what was wrong. I was presented the grandfather’s of other families and noticed a distinct difference. I was growing out of a care free child into a monster of a teen ager. I began to feel cheated with my grandfather. Why wasn’t mine sober? Why wasn’t mine nice? Why couldn’t my grandfather be perfect and happy and smiling?
I was a silly, over hyper child who must have seemed to turn into an awful, hateful teen right before parents and family. Because I, like every teenager, thought I knew everything and I spent most of the latter years with him spewing vitriolic crap. How much I hated him, how awful a person he was, how ashamed I was of him. We’d spend hours yelling back and forth at one another and he’d yell at my Grandmother. I’d yell at him for yelling at her, she’d yell at me for yelling at him, and he’d yell at us both. And he drank and he drank and he drank.
The cycle just kept going until all the memories of the blue-eyed grinning man whose cheeks crinkled when he smiled, faded. All I remembered was the sour-smelling angry little man that loved to use the word cocksucker to describe what dinner tasted like. I began to hoard all of the awful memories of him and forgot any of the good.
He turned into a pale reed of a man I thought I knew.
And now that time has passed and it is too late, I also remember that in spite of it all, all that was wrong with him and I, he really did try.
He used to sing to me old songs that I sometimes half-hear the melody too if I am very still. When I was very, very, very ill as a young teen with a fever so bad that I had to be soaked in ice water, he sat on a chair near me and the nurse rubbing alcohol over me to bring the fever down to watch me as much as he could during the course of the flu.
One time during a particularly enthusiastic charge from the top of the stairs—I tripped instead and fell down all thirteen of them. These were steep steps from a 100 year old house; wide to a child in addition to being almost too steep for adults. I fell from the very top of those stairs to the very bottom, stomach first, knocking the wind out of my lungs. This short little man with sticks for arms flung himself from a laying position on the couch, came to my side, and picked me up to carry me to the couch and lay me upon it before I could recover enough air to wail in panic.
I remember so many things, now.
I remember that I could not love him the way he wanted me to. I was angry that he did not seem to care what he was doing to himself, to his family, to my mother and especially my grandmother. I was angry at myself for being such a horrific grand daughter. I was angry, angry, and angry and did not want to see anything he did as remotely worth caring about.
When he died, I was quite ready to tell the world I did not care, and I did in an old journal that no longer exists. I said I didn’t care and I was glad that he was gone.
This wasn’t true. This was an echo of the sixteen year old spoiled brat within me still angry at a man who couldn’t win over his addiction.
Several years have passed since my grandfather, Cecil Rawding has passed. I’ve had more time and more life shoveled into me to consider the things I have done and haven’t done and I’ve had time to grow up enough to look back on who I was and feel shame.
I wonder, now, if he ever knew that I could not love him the way he wanted me to, but now that I have grown older I can see him for what he was and should be—that I love him for that.
Did he know how he taught me unwittingly to stay away from drinking as I grew older? Did he know I remember the good through the bad? Did he realize these things before he died? Is he somewhere reading this and the corners of his eyes are crinkling up, slow, the way I picture it in my mind a thousand times?
I’ll never know. I was miles away and before he died the drink didn’t leave much humanity left to him. It’s too late, now, to say these things. All I have is the wind to carry a murmur and a wish.
All I have to give back to him is this digital piece of parchment to tell the world the story about a man who tried.
I love you Grampy, I’m sorry.
