My paternal great Grandfather was known, by the more religious and upright of the family, as "The Black 'n". He was considered a nasty piece of work, whose only contribution was his ability to produce a lot of children. As a young man in the late 1800's, he managed to escape an explosion at the Wellington coal mine, outside Nanaimo BC, by climbing up a cable, loosing most of the flesh on his hands in the process. Unfortunately, his younger brother, age 14, along with 77 others, did not survive the disaster. Perhaps this experience had some bearing on his demeanor, but I believe liquor probably had more.

His son, my paternal Grandfather, left home at a very early age, after beating him for throwing a coal oil lamp at his long suffering wife. The family tale of my grandfather's outburst always seemed odd to me as a child, because my grandfather was the gentlest of souls, much loved by his grandchildren. A tiny man, made even smaller by scoliosis, he spent a great deal of his retirement with us, taking us for walks and building garden swings and whirligigs in his basement workshop. My favourite whirligig was "Dudley" the little wooden man who furiously cranked away whenever the wind blew. Sort of reminded me of Grandpa.

Because of his diminutive size, when we were young, we grandchildren delighted in playing dress up in Grampa's clothes, particularly his salt and pepper cap and long tweed overcoat and shoes. He died in his late 80's, when we were teenagers and my brother wrote the following regarding him during his last days:

Grampa Jack

I watched as you daily unremembered things
sort of like baking a cake in reverse
a little less of this, a little less of that
take away one teaspoon of the past.....
But suddenly fold in one lucid moment!
a sprig of over sweet lilac
one milk cart which left you a hunchback...one donkey engine
a kerosene lantern lantern sent in a drunken rage across the head of
your beloved mother, by your father who you beat unconscious
and left forever....
three lost brothers, or,
were they lost family photographs....?
And then there was the time when that locomotive derailed
and you were there to pull the engineer from the wreck but the stream
had done its damage, like your years, and when you took his arm
to pull him to safety, his skin slid off his arm as smoothly
as Garbo's evening glove, only....
gone
blank
Eyes like wet, grey sand and a rattle of a voice
through lips as thin as tin...no teeth, you see
saying "who are you"
and you crushed who you loved but no longer knew.....
And I watched quiet....hurt...angry...ashamed, as you slipped
behind that veil of ether to unremember me
for the last time