It's customary to write about the dead, to remember them in ink on lined paper. As though we don't trust our leaky minds to store all our memories. Famous people are preserved in print after they pass away. But my grandad wasn't famous; he didn't invent anything or write any books or win any awards. This is probably the only obituary that'll be written for him. He was an ordinary man, a quiet man, and a brave man.
Usually, we describe lives from the start. He was born here, these were his parents, this was his school. But those details mean nothing to me. So I'll start near the end.
Grandad was always dapper, in his own way. Even after he had cancer and his jet black hair softened to grey, it was still smoothly combed over. Brushed over with the same comb he used to wrap in paper and play tunes on like a harmonica when I was a little girl. Over time, he grew thinner and thinner, but he always was lean, like Jack Sprat.
The front room was always his room; in amongst Grandma's porcelain dolls, looked upon by youthful, bouffant-haired versions of my aunts and uncles graduating and getting married, a tray of toffees and sweets never too far away. (I like to think I get my sweet tooth from Grandad, but that's probably just an excuse I make for my own greediness.) He watched sport and quiz shows, although I can't remember him ever having much to say about them.
He didn't say much at all really. Edged out by Grandma and her best friend Ruth's chatter about knitting and grandchildren and Coronation Street, he could only share in the talk about gardening. He used to come round to our house to sort out Mum's vegetable patch. I'd get ambushed by a conversation about beans, or the compost. That'll be my mum in 20 years' time.
I can only recall doing one thing with just Grandad. We went to the Imperial War Museum when I was about eight or nine. He told me about some of the planes, but I was more interested in the 1940s house. I imagined what it would have been like to live through the war, eating Spam and sleeping in the bunker. Grandad, of course, did live through it. He was at a naval school, but was too young to see any action. He was at school there because he was an orphan; a Barnardo's boy. His dad had gotten ill and his mum ran away. We never knew what happened to her.
My aunt started researching the family tree some years ago and got hold of Grandad's Barnardo's files. It was pretty sad to read. He'd been found begging on the streets; he was about ten. My mum theorised that perhaps this was why he was so careful with his money. I'm not so sure.
As far as I can tell, he was just a super hard worker. He was an engineer - worked on motors and machines - and only took Sundays off. Mum was proud of this, proud of him and, tied up in that, proud of herself. I'm also proud of them; proud that my grandad made a happy life from an unhappy start and that that let my mum go to university and have a successful career; to be the working class girl with a big brain.
Grandad was great at drawing. In St Christopher's Hospice, where he stayed after his stomach cancer, he took up painting. He made pictures of lots of animals, but I remember best the image of a hammerhead shark. It was so detailed, so neat, so perfect. He had an eye for precision. I used to send Grandma postcards and cards from university, and one year at Christmas I sent a picture of a donkey. Grandad painted it, the little white nosed donkey peering over a snow-covered fence. It made me feel warm inside to see.
He made Katie and I a dolls' house too. It had carpeted floors and light fittings and a roof that could be lifted to see the attic. I reminded him of this last time I saw him - told him how much better it was than any of the dolls' houses you saw in shops. I think he remembered it, his blue eyes sparkling behind his big glasses held to his nose with sticky pads.
I also told him about how, when I was really little, I'd be scared of him when he came home from work. He'd walk into the kitchen - warm fudge-coloured cabinets, brown patterned lino from the 70s, flour jars from advertising offers long gone by on the shelves - in his bike leathers, still wearing his helmet, and I'd think he was an alien. I'd hide behind Grandma's skirts until he took it off. 'Alright darlin',' he'd say. That was how he always said hello.
'Right-ho,' he'd say as well. And 'Cheerio'. Katie and I learnt to avoid his sloppy goodbye kisses, craftily turning our faces at the last minute so he'd only be able to smacker us on the cheek. We all learnt that it was best to leave him alone to nap in the front room after dinner. Once his stomach was removed because of the cancer, he'd find it tricky to digest much, so would only eat children's portions and have painful wind. He'd hiccup sort of into himself, not theatrically, but as though he didn't want to interrupt anyone, as though he was trying not to catch anyone's attention.
It'll be strange to see his green sofa empty, to miss his wide-eyed, semi-surprised smile in a family photo at Christmas. He hasn't spent much time in his garage for a while now, but that's where he always was once - before he took up in the front room. He could fix anything - that's why they call him Flash Gordon. Phones, food processors, TVs, bikes. He saved Mum's precious Kenwood mixer, and de-rusted and painted my bike before I started at university. He'd tinker away for hours in the dimly-lit room, smelling of oil and old papers, wearing his workman's overalls.
