This will be my first Christmas without my Grandad. All 33 before it he's been there. This is probably the only place on the Internet I feel I can post this, because in a way I guess it has no place being posted anywhere - but I also want to share it, not because I particularly think it can help anyone, but so it can cause a moment of reflection this time of year. To remember the impact and memory of those who are gone, and to renew the love and appreciation for those whom remain.
And thus as I wish you all a Merry Christmas, I leave you all with the words I spoke on the day we gathered to say our final goodbyes.
My Grandad, Keith.
He did not feel like a man of this world. More of something of a fairytale, like the last remanent of childhood wonder one felt when Santa and the tooth fairy were known to be true.
This almost magical-being presence was created by a number of factors; first being the fact that for most of my childhood - I could not understand most of what he was saying, instead relying on his trusty translator, my grandmother, to share with us what had been said. Further aided by stories of him feeding Robins from his hand, charging into quicksand to save my mother’s puppy and (and if this isn’t true, I don’t wish to know) of him training a Hare to turn on light switches. It was like something out of Snow White.
And - because he didn’t seem to be mortal. Having a full head of hair for far longer than my own father, in my living memory, and having been diagnosed with at least 3 types of cancer – of which he was told would be the end of him in 10 or 20 years - and just shrugging it off. The man wasn’t afraid of death, it was more as if he didn’t understand the concept of it. As if it didn’t apply to him. And somewhere, in some childlike like part of my mind I believed he would live longer than myself, that he would live forever.
Though of course he wasn’t flawless. When I was a child, he would pick up the most destroyed and ruined footballs one could imagine off the street with the claim they were still good to use, and in horse racing the horse that won was always the one he was “going to pick” but never did.
But fairytales are stories to be told, to be passed down and to bring joy. Today we grieve the fact that all stories have an ending. The final page turn where no more words are written. But we must also celebrate the fact that we got to be in that story. The story of a man who was kind enough that Robins would tap on the window to eat seed from his hand.
His gift of childhood wonder in his presence shall be with me always.
To know him is to know magic is real.
