Last Wednesday, my grandfather died. It wast not completely unexpected, yet also sudden. In The Fault in Our Stars, John Green describes falling in love like falling asleep, something that happens “slowly, and then all at once.” I think death is like that too. Even when it’s merciful, even when it is a long time coming, it seems a life is extinguished so quickly. It’s a long entrance into the world, but such a swift exit.
I am not a believer in an afterlife—no comfy clouds or choirs of angels, as nice as that would be. And at times like this, that’s hard. If he lives on, he lives on in us.
More than anything, my grandpa was a builder. His life was the proof that you could learn anything, accomplish anything, build anything. He and my grandma emigrated to Canada from Germany when they were 21 and 18, respectively. They spoke no English and had nothing but $20 and a camera. (Or $5—it depends who you ask.) It was post World War II, and Germans were not the most popular group, though in time they would become fiercely proud Canadians. They were devoted to their new country before it was devoted to them.
My grandma cleaned houses, he tuned organs, often logging many miles behind the wheel to reach a broken instrument. They learned English from people at church who were kind to them, from my grandmother’s employer, from reading the dictionary. They had two sons, and slowly, they built a life.
In the decades that followed my grandfather learned carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring: he built the house that was the heart of my childhood from the ground up. When, decades later, we moved them out of that home and into assisted care, we found the original blueprints and a wooden model, complete with a roof you could life off to view the rooms inside. (That can be life in trying times: suddenly, an aerial view.) That house was singular: it had floor-to-ceiling murals, two pools, intercoms between rooms, an enormous bar for their many parties, and, my favourite, an underground passageway between my grandfather’s workshop to the detached garage. (I never asked them if this was a legacy of the war or a simple aversion to snow. There are too many things I didn’t ask.) He built me a one-room playhouse that would make tiny-house enthusiasts swoon. And then there was the dollhouse, which was the definition of love in the details: the rooms had their own wallpaper, flooring, and working lights. They were furnished with beautiful furniture, carved, painted, polished and upholstered by hand. I can still feel the tiny porch swing yield to my fingertip.
I, the first grandchild, was around my grandparents’ house a lot in the first seven years of my life. And so my grandpa learned to be a grandfather too. I think he was a fairly stern father (just ask my dad or uncle about “the stick”), but as a grandfather all his softness was revealed, like a fruit that had finally ripened. He shared his painting space, doled out pocket change to greedy young hands, served Ritz crackers and ginger ale in his office, and swirled little girls around swimming pools again and again and again. He learned a different way of loving, and I learned a different way of being loved, a feeling like floating in warm water, or being tucked tightly into bed. Next to losing him himself, which in reality happened years go, it’s that loss of that love that cuts the deepest.
His life was one of near-constant doing and tinkering, and he mastered so many other things: singing opera, playing the piano and accordion, painting, growing beautiful roses, golfing, playing tennis, and, that most Canadian of pastimes, curling.
He also built a successful tool-and-die company that would bear his name. (It started as a one-room building for his organ company—except people kept bringing him other things to fix.) Nobody in the family took over that company, and so when he retired, he insisted it be sold to his employees. The company is sadly gone now, and with only granddaughters in the family line, unless someone bucks convention, our name will disappear too.
But I hope he saw how his legacy lives on in less obvious ways. My father also sneezes after a meal, is an accomplished carpenter, loves to golf and watch TV outside. He brings people together like no one else (except maybe his father), and he’s always willing to lend a hand. He and I both love few things more than a project—we may be hardwired to build, in one way or another. Or maybe we’ve just seen that a life can be impossibly full, and that a legacy isn’t a monument made of stone, but a living thing, a tree with many branches. We think of our ancestors as the root, but I like to think of them as the centre that we encircle year by year. The tree changes, but the core remains the same.
Echolocation 