The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Jack

My grandfather Jack has been dead for twenty-five years.

I still remember that morning, though the details are less ready than they used to be. What I remember was the black morning, the chill of the carpet on my bare feet, and the blind stumbling toward my slightly open door which was beaming a sliver of light onto the bottom of my bed. I heard weeping, but not the kind I was accustomed to. It was not my mother and her usual self-pity, and it was not either of my sisters who were both still sleeping soundly. This was the sound of my father in despair, and while I had never been ready for the sound of this, I was even less prepared for it in the early morning hours.

I walked toward my parent's room and could not bear to knock on the door. I didn't want to see him crying, it would have made it too real for me. I tiptoed back to my room and sat on my bed, waiting for the sadness to stop. I didn't know what had happened, but I knew that it was irreversible because my father would never cry about something which had the potential for change. He was too optimistic to wallow while in the midst of possibilities.

Eventually, my mother came to my room to tell me that my grandda had died, that it had been unexpected and that my father was distraught. My grandmother had only just been settled in a home, having been struck by Alzheimer's Disease, and my grandfather, having battled the guilt of allowing her to be put there, had only just started to consider living his life without her. Apparently, this included a trip to Canada to see us, and he'd even arranged the ticket.

While I am grateful to have had a close relationship with my mother's parents, I always felt a longing to know my other grandparents in the same way. They were mysterious to me, people who existed in stories my dad told, in phone calls and a handful of grainy photos. When I finally met them in person, I was eight or so, and I was so overwhelmed with all the relatives I was meeting for the first time that I didn't have much of a chance to talk with them in the way I would have wanted. I remember them smiling at us a lot, and watching, which was a bit disconcerting. My grandmother was the silent type, always keeping an eye on what was happening and you could feel her gaze on your back. Grandda was the one with the humour, the one who danced with the children and who slipped money into pockets for sweets. Also, he looked just like my father, and I remember finding that strange and unsettling for some reason. After that visit, there were the weekend phone calls, each one a bit of torture as their accents were thicker than my father's now was, and also, the phone lines back then were not as clear as they are now. They would ask their questions at least three times before I could understand what they were, and through it all they would laugh with delight even though I was looking for a way to end the conversation.

When he died, I was mostly concerned about my father and his reaction, but eventually I came to realize that any possibility of developing a relationship with him myself was over. I couldn't cry about it because his death was in another country, just like his life had been, but I felt a kind of sadness that I can only describe as being in its seedling stage, one that slowly grew inside, twisting gently around the bones and heart. I grew into my grief, I suppose, becoming more and more aware that a person I would have liked to have known was never going to be available to me, and that everyone who knew him well were getting older themselves, losing the details and the memories. I began to understand that he would eventually be only a name, a box of dust under a chipped tombstone, and anything about me which might be tied to him and his influence would never come to light.

I saw the grave, once. I was visiting Dublin, and as soon as we were met at the airport by my uncles and aunts, we were whisked off to the cemetery as it is the family's custom to pay respect to the dead before all else. I was jet-lagged and hungry, and I might have also been irritated that they had chosen to arrange the day that way, but I do recall being struck by the sudden awareness that my grandparents were under the stone before me. Six weeks after my grandfather died, my grandmother joined him, and they are buried together in the very cemetery in which she used to read on a bench every afternoon. This cemetery had no grass, I remember, with very tight graves that had tiny wire fences to separate them. We all stood silent, and I felt conspicuous, not knowing what I was expected to do, exactly. I looked at my aunts and uncles and realized that they were praying, but I couldn't do that. I just stared and tried to see them through the dirt.

I have very few pictures of them, which I find unfair. Of course, I'm not sure there were many of them to begin with. They did not have family portraits, did not have school photos of their children on the walls. They were practical and seemingly unsentimental people, but of course, that's just what I've been told. I don't believe it. I met them, I saw the warmth in their eyes and I know they felt a great deal more than they ever spoke about. It was just their way. They both had seen people die, shot in the streets of Dublin in 1916, and they both had very passionate views about politics and religion. I can't help but admire them both for living a life rooted in a passion for the land on which they lived as well as for the love of their family. It's old world, but it was real.

He died on a Friday, too, the thirteenth of March, twenty-five years ago today. I don't know if he was particularly superstitious, but I would guess he would have thought that any day to die was just as unlucky as any other. It was a stroke, I think. There hadn't been much drama, just an exit which hadn't been counted on by anyone involved.

I look in the mirror sometimes and I try to see him. My eyes are green, his were brown. My face is round and his was long. He was tall and I'm short. I nearly give up hope and then I see it, the thing which assures me that he's in here after all: the cleft in my chin. He had it, my father has it, and so do I. It is the mark of distinction, the physical trait that many on that side of the family share, the family crest that looks like a bum right at the bottom of my face. Grandfather's ass chin. It makes me unbelievably happy. I still remember the pride I felt when I saw that my own child had a cleft on her chin as well. There's grandda!, I thought, he lives on.

I'm glad I didn't inherit the nose, though. My sister got that and she's not impressed at all.