I never knew my grandfathers.
Both of them were dead before I was born, but throughout my life I’ve taken little moments of inspiration and influence from various grandfather-aged men. These men are not necessarily related to me, most are not. I may not have known them well, but somewhere along the line they have left lasting impressions or lingering memories that I’ve carried into my adulthood.
This is one part of a series that I am working on entitled "The Grandfathers"
The Grandfathers: David of St. Matthias
I want to say that David was tanned, with brown, straight hair kept short—but that could be a lie or at least not the truth. The truth is I don’t remember what he looked like, or anything about him really. He and his wife were my grandmother’s friends who lived upstairs.
They all lived in an old-looking apartment complex across the street from St. Matthias Church on the South Coast. Red-tiled stone stairs made a semi-circle above my grandmother’s downstairs door where I have memories of sticking my finger with a sharpened pencil and bawling at a cockroach in the shower. David and his wife Daphne lived upstairs in the largest apartment. I seem to recall wooden floors and large bay windows overlooking the driveway on one side of the house and the most magical spot of my early days on the other side.
[A modern photo of the front of David & Daphne's place]
The Magic Place was a large garden in the back where the adults would sit on mossy lawn furniture sipping warm beverages while I, the only youth in the place, would quest for newborn tortoises between rows of hanging ferns and the roots of an ancient Mahogany tree. There was a gigantic pile of leaves to the back, near the aluminium sheets that acted as the boundary fence to the property, where tortoises laid eggs and burrowed underneath. Boy days were great in that place. Perhaps this is where my love for tortoises comes from, I can only assume.
David taught me to play cards; Suck-The-Well to be precise. Not much technique involved and I imagine my company wasn’t the most entertaining for him. But I admire that he took the time with a small child, at a time when we were told that children "should be seen, not heard". That is the legacy he gave to me. They had no children of their own and after Daphne died of throat cancer in the 90s a distraught and depressed David ate his gun in their longtime home across from the cathedral. I’m told after her death he stopped grooming himself, stopped going out for groceries. He stopped living. I don’t resent him for it.
I don’t remember my reaction to their deaths; I didn’t know them well and was far less sentimental in my youth than now. His face is a distant blur to me now, but I can recall Daphne’s face and her raspy breathy voice once the cancer settled in for the stay.
I imagine pigeons and doves scattering from the Church bell tower as that lonely gunshot echoed through sacred space leaving a stinging resounding silence in the suddenly Former Home of David and Daphne.
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