The Alphabet in My iPod Part 3: F

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 21^st 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 50^th 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.