My Biggest Influence Writing Competition Spring 2013

Gramps
Mike Long

He was always my guiding light, my sheet anchor.

Gramps was a man of small stature just as I turned out to be.

He had a full head of hair right up until he died in February 1964, aged 75.

I have a copy of Charles Spencelayh’s 1938 painting Why War? hanging on my study wall. The sad gentleman in the picture is the image of Gramps who would have endorsed the sentiments depicted. "Coming back from the Great War unscathed, leaving comrades behind, means I must not waste this gift of life," he would say.

Gramps was never angry, always smart, always calm and considerate. He had a passion for always doing what was decent and true and proper. Gramps always did 'the right thing', and he always smoked his pipe.

He never went to church which was in complete contrast to my religious father who sneered at him for this paganism. Father always had a church rule that could be twisted to justify his latest unkindness or selfishness. As a last resort his 'get out of jail free' card was "Thou shalt honour thy father".

Gramps understood my loneliness whenever my belligerent mother, his daughter, berated me for not being the girl that she had set her heart upon.

He silently comforted me when, as a six-year-old, I was severely beaten by my teacher for protecting an orphan boy from her, and then later when my father beat me again for having brought disgrace upon our family by defying this lady who I later came to think of as 'Attila the Nun'.

Gramps just smiled at me reassuringly. He was a man of few words, a benevolent Alpha presence like some of the canines that I became familiar with later in life.

But Gramps refused to allow his house to be a haven for me: "It is wrong to have any favourites," he would say and his eyes would roll to the heavens when Gran could be heard in the background muttering that my elder brother was her favourite. Yet I was able to derive great comfort and strength from his tacit support.

I vowed that I would one day be the man that Gramps was.

It was 1963 and Christmas was fast approaching when the doctor declared: "All that coughing will end in about six weeks."

"That’s great," he said. "I’ve had a good innings, and I want to be in control when I go. I couldn’t bear to lose any control of my life or my faculties. I couldn’t bear to be a cripple or dependant on others." He had never had a day off sick in all his working life.

The day after his retirement he immediately took on another job as the 'greeter' at the front door of the department store in Henry Street. He attended to his task every day for 10 years and even walked the mile to work and back, the day after he’d had a stroke.

They said it was the tobacco that had done for him. Half a century ago, it was the first time I’d heard the word 'CANCER'.

He meticulously put all his affairs in order and made his wishes clear.

As his suffering worsened, we moved his bed down into his lounge and took turns to sleep on his settee, some company for the chorus of painful groans and coughing, which became progressively worse as time went by.

Then he quietly announced, "Today’s the day. I’ve done all I need to do".

The six weeks' notice was up.

It was my turn to accompany him that night and I thought nothing of what he had said, even when he didn’t say "goodnight".

He had gripped me with a surprising strength and said: "Goodbye Michael".

When I woke up, I knew that he had gone. There was this eerie silence.

His excruciating groaning and rasping had ceased. He was at peace, and it was at the time and place of his own choosing.

It was my first sight of any death, let alone that of someone loved.

But I was strangely proud to have been the one who had accompanied him as he took himself off on his journey to eternity. It was as if a baton was being handed over for me to carry on where he left off.

I had always striven to emulate his ways and had already learned that true richness has little to do with monetary wealth.

Then, at the age of 22 I took up the ultimate challenge. I vowed to fully become the man that he had always been.

My yardstick has been simple — "What would Gramps do?"

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