The rug in my Grandparent’s basement was speckled deep red and brown. It was so thick you could stick your fingers into it up to your knuckles. And we did, my sister and I, as babies, as toddlers, reaching downwards into the beginning of the Earth. The walls surrounding the carpet housed a suspicious military document (none of our ancestors went to war), portraits of life-long neighbourhood friends, a Blue Jays logo, and a framed [25] spelled out in quarters, honouring my Grandparent’s 25th anniversary.
There was a fireplace, too. It was there my Grandpa taught me that if I inhaled as much as I could the exhalation would create flames. It was there my Dad told my Mom I love you for the first time. It was there I shoved an entire shelled pistachio into my mouth, distracted by the heat and power of the hearth, and my Dad had to pat my back until the shell flew across the room from my throat. When I consider all of the memories the fireplace watched — months, years, eventually decades, I am humbled by its molten eyes; its capacity for quiet secrecy.
There was an organ in the basement. My Grandpa would drink whisky and cokes and play the organ. In my adult life I have avoided the sound both simply, with an absence from religious buildings, and deliberately, through the exiting of doors, the shutting of occasional musical accidents. I want to preserve the sound of the organ that my Grandpa created in the basement. (It is nothing like a piano, which my sister and I both eventually learned to stumble through, no, it is a sound of its own.)
Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? I asked my Grandpa, once, watching hockey on his couch. I affirmed that the Detroit Red Wings were the good guys because they had wings. They’re who you decide they are, Brookster. They’re all good and bad to different people.
What do I know of his life? Little, outside of: His love for my Grandma Judy, a job at Nestle, a fondness for owls, baseball, computers, the sun in Florida.
What do I know of sacrifice?
My Grandpa died this morning. I read the news and waited. I waited for the unfurl of nausea, unbearable weight, shaking. I waited for what goodbye has meant to me and my body, but it did not come. I went to a yoga class and moved and stayed still and cried until a simple thought came to me:
This is the first goodbye that makes sense. This is his gift.
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It’s a Wednesday and my sister and I are eight and six, bundled in colourful snowsuits, squished next to the front door of my Mom’s townhouse. We are waiting for something we do not believe is a goodbye. We are waiting for ice-cream with our Dad.
We will learn that this is the night that he will not come. We will learn this the night that he will never come again. This is the night two weeks before he will stumble, swearing, into my Grandfather’s kitchen and utter: you either see them or you see me. This is the night two weeks before my Grandfather looks his only son in the eye and chooses my sister and I. Chooses me.
What do I know of sacrifice?
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My Dad’s goodbye did not make sense. Years later, I will live a human life, and many people I love will leave. It will not make sense. They will leave through doors and morgues. But today, the day that I have to say goodbye to the person I know loved me more than the world, loved me more than the sun, today makes sense.
He missed his wife, she called to him, he answered.
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If I picture love it is two places: the safe, swaddled warmth of my Grandparent’s basement, and the open green light of their backyard. The backyard was all grass, some garden, with a mint shed in the Northwest corner. If you were tall enough to see — and I never was — just above the shed was Chinguacousy Park. My Grandpa nick-named my cousins, sister, and I from fragments of the park: fresh air, blue sky, sunshine.
You are my sunshine, he would sing, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you…
Sometimes, in moments as quiet as the fireplace, I do.
