Day 6: F is for Faure, Requiem: Opus 48
My grandfather was a man of sawdust and
sweets, skinny legs and cardigans. Grandpa could fix just about anything. He worked for the railways as a communications
technician and throughout his life developed skills in carpentry, woodturning, electronics,
building and lock-smithing just because he could. He had a workshop in his
garage, where tools hung in the right place on a painted backboard and where
blood blisters were inflicted by old-fashioned vices. Furniture was always
being created, assembled and finished off in that workshop, and my siblings and
I would play with the sweet smelling curls of the wood-shavings until we
shredded them into dust. I can still breathe in that smell and recall that
garage. Everything, including grandpa’s dark blue overalls, was spattered with
varnish, paint and woodworking glue, the smells of which added their astringent
notes to the deeply woody scent.
Behind the door of the garage hung an old
canvas bag with a rope threaded through its top. The bag was filled with tennis
balls, old and new, and it was where we checked for the tools for whatever game
we might need to play in Grandpa’s backyard, as long as we could avoid the
apple tree, plum tree, crabapple tree and vegie garden, replete with red and
yellow tomatoes which could be filched at any time with his blessing.
Grandpa had his teeth removed when he was
young – he loved to take out his dentures and flap his bare gums at us as
little kids to provoke shrieks of terror and mirth combined. “Give us a kiss!”
he’d flap at us, grinning maniacally. I’m not sure why he had his teeth out: I
believe the cost/benefit analysis of being toothless versus paying for fillings
over a lifetime appealed to his pragmatism and he was equipped with false teeth
therewith. Mind you, he told us kids it was so that he could eat all the
lollies he wanted, which he did. He would do a special trip to a wholesale outlet
once a week – Dollar Sweets – and would come back to Hazel Street, Camberwell and
fill up his lolly jars. He always, ALWAYS had a roll of peppermints in his
pocket or about his person, and when other adults weren’t looking would whisper
conspiratorially, “Want a pep’mint?”. After his death my mother, grandmother
and aunt went through his clothes to pass on to charities, and found
peppermints in almost every pocket of his trousers, cardigans and jackets. They
laughed and cried in equal measure, but they weren’t surprised.
Grandpa was down to earth, had a strong
work ethic and a deep-seated sense of justice. He didn’t like anyone to fuss
over him but he was happy to heap praise on us grandkids. He rewarded me with
$2 for every A-grade I achieved at school, and joked that I would send him to
the poorhouse. He had principles and wouldn’t stand for nonsense. He was a
teetotaler who got everyone drunk at mum’s 21st birthday party
because he didn’t trust anyone to run the bar but himself. My own father, just
starting to court my mother, did the right thing and alerted grandpa to the over-generous
measures of alcohol he was dispensing and thereby averted potential disaster.
Grandpa was a passionate Hawthorn
supporter. He spent many years with my grandma sitting at Glenferrie Oval
watching the Hawks play, and in later years watching them on the telly. Grandpa’s
hearing wasn’t what it used to be, so he always had the volume up REALLY loud.
Unfortunately, for years he had heart problems including angina, and sometimes
the footy would become so exciting he was worried about having a heart attack before
he could find out the result. Grandpa set up a system in which Grandma would
listen to the footy on the wireless while he worked away in the garage, and he
would check in with her at the end of each quarter to get the score. If all
went well with the Hawks, he could go ahead and watch the 6:30 replay without
palpitations.
It was his heart that gave way in the end.
We didn’t realise that for many years he was the one looking after my Grandma,
Edna. He loved her dearly, and on their 50th wedding anniversary he
presented her with a gold medal that he’d made. A man of few words publicly, he
made a speech about how grandma deserved a medal for being married to him. On
the day he died, grandma was feeling cold, which with her underactive thyroid
was not uncommon. He brought grandma a cup of tea in bed to help her get warm,
and when she said she just couldn’t get warm he said “Move over Ed, I’ll get in
and warm you up.” And his gruff old heart stopped.
There’s a lot that’s inexpressible about my
love for my grandpa, just as it is difficult to describe Faure’s Requiem
without it seeming either maudlin or treacly, but it is neither. When the
melody of part VII: In Paradisum played at the funeral and grandpa’s casket
glided back behind the curtain, there was such a finality about it that broke
my heart. But the music still plays, and in it are carried these precious
memories of him.
I don’t know if my childhood memories are
accurate or not, but they are part of my narrative for what they are worth.
What I know for sure is how grandpa made me feel. Faure’s Requiem once made me
let him go, but now it brings him back.
