In the depths of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer. - Camus
My grandfather, Denny, is nearing the end of his life. I have heard people in his position, read their words, that talk of the coming of night, the encroaching darkness, and you can do nothing to prevent the dark curtain of night closing in all around you. When mum calls, she says, “It really could be any day now.” But it has felt like this for years. For four years, since his first heart surgery, and the many organ failures and heart attacks in between, we have thought ‘this is it.’ But he has gone on. A true Cockney, born within the sound of Bow Bells in London, where I lived with him and my grandmother as a child, he still has that fighting Cockney spirit. He looks death in the eye and spits. Spits with disgust. A “you’ll never get me”, Under different circumstances, I’d say he would win this fight – he’s tough. But not this one. It is one of the saddest things of all when you realize that from the minute you were born, you have been making a slow evolution to this point. You’ve been living your whole life, and with each day, moving closer to the inevitable. But none of us beats death. It beats us, and beats us and beats us. It is punishing for those who feel the encroaching gloom, and punishing for those of us who can do nothing but watch as the ones we love slip away from us, stolen in the night.
Death is never fair. We try to remain logical, make sense of it. We say things like, “He had a good life,” as if somehow this made it more bearable. It doesn’t. There is little comfort to be found anywhere under such circumstances. So, knowing that, I want to tell you a story about his life, our life, before the night came closing in.
Denny was never a large man, but he was always a strong man. In England, where we are from, Denny was a contractor who ran his own business, simply named “Home Improvements.” He operated out of an ugly but efficient brown van that he had hand-painted the company name on the side and outfitted the interior with shelves and hooks to hold his many tools and jars of nails and bolts. As a child, I never had to wonder who paved the streets of London; it was my grandfather. Paving streets takes strength, and as a child, I remember seeing him covered in cement dust, his hands so callused and overworked, that even when he scrubbed the gray grit remained forever embedded in his skin. He could single-handedly hang sheets of drywall, climb around church belfries and build new frames for the bells.
Article comments
1 - Robert Nagle
What a fascinating tale and lovely observations. Cinema tends to fall in love with mirrors (recently I saw Tarkovsky's Solaris), and when I am surrounded by your self-image, I tend to burrow inside and focus on myself without having to face the outside world. I have a full length mirror on one of my walls, and it spooks me to death. I have a fear of accidentally catching myself in the middle of the night in some compromising awful-looking position or posture. I'd much prefer to be a faceless presence and not have to think of myself as a corporeal living animal.
Having mirrors on all sides would render the physical body inescapable, leaving nothing to hide behind, no barriers between the spectator and spectacle.
2 - sadi
Rj - i see what you mean, but this wasn't our house it was a contract job for this middle eastern guy who had very definite ideas. but the effect was really dazzling in the end and it was amazing to see the outside world brought in through the glass - truly. so it wasnt' so much about seeing yourself (about which i agree), but more about seeing the rest of the world fragmented; those details that we too easily miss... when it's broken down like that, you note the smallest thing, and sometimes, the smallest htings are the lovliest -- the pigeons or mourning doves on the telephone line, etc.
thanks for reading, as ever.
sade
3 - Robert Nagle
I wish you had a photo!
4 - sadi
a photo would have been great, but alas i was just a kiddo. i often wonder if the place is still like that, though i kind of doubt it. but would be cool if it is... was very very neat to see the world broken up like that. a really amazing effect....
thx. for reading --
srp
5 - Steve
I must confess, I am usually not good at noticing aesthetics, although what you described certainly does sound out of the ordinary, and would have been eye catching, I'm sure. I guess functionality is key for me, as long as something does whatever it's supposed to do, I'm happy. So unless I am given something that is of sentimental value, I generally don't have much use for knick knacks and such.
Although my dad was a boat builder in his teens, I must say, I have never liked to be around handymen and the mess that goes with them. However, I do admire the hard work they do, it would be a great skill/aptitude to have. I guess I just don't like to work with things that I can't reason with when they don't do as they're supposed to lol.
Interesting piece Sadi, my mother died of cancer in April 2003. Fortunately, though she had radiation treatments for a number of months before she died, she didn't seem to suffer too much and only lost her faculties a few days before her death. I am grateful she did not die of, say Alzheimer's or something, that takes years to kill someone, which a friend of mine had to suffer through.
6 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
See, and i always liked it... maybe i should have directed you elsewhere... who knows.. or let you find your own way... but i used to love being on site, making cups of tea for the workers and the like... it just fascinated me. But i was a real tom boy for while, then i sort of became lady like as i got older... sort of...
lol,
s. ~ thanks for reading...
7 - Steve
Well, Sadi, I'm sure I'll get to some of your other articles in time. Funny, one of my best friends was a tomboy as a kid.