Giants

When you’re young, you find comfort in what to you are unchanging reference points – a parent, tall as a giant, whose legs you can cling to for comfort; or a grandparent, who always has and always will live. When you are little, grandparents are eternal, as old as time itself, stoic markers of a world that makes sense because they’re in it – they’ve seen it all and can guide you through the confusion life brings. And when they’re taken from you, the world seems a much bigger, scarier place. It rocks you.

Granddad was one of my reference points. He was like a tree, unchanging in my child’s eyes down the years. His white moustache was always immaculate. His bearing was always upright. There was a precision in his movements that was wholly unique. He was always busy with his hands, and I loved going into the hallowed grounds of his neat workshop, watching him shape wood using one of his lathes or planes, bent over a bench, adding a slight whorl or nick to something. Just the smallest whiff of sawdust takes me to his workshop on a hot day, the cicadas screaming from the trees like the world will end.

I think we all lost a reference point last Sunday morning. Whether you’re a grandchild, son, daughter, cousin, niece, nephew or friend, a marker has been uprooted next to the one sweet Dordor left. It’s impossible to talk about Granddad without thinking about Dordor. But we can take heart that he has gone to his reward. And we each can keep those special memories we all have of them – dust motes swirling in Granddad’s workshop, long chats about the latest book Granddad was reading, lunches under the tree in the garden, sneaking jam drops from the pantry, crosswords on the veranda in Ramsgate.

I miss Granddad more than I can say, and I can’t wait to see him again.