"Bapa" is what we called him because the eldest among us, Andrew, pronounced "Grandpa" in that funny way. And it stuck.
My heart still hurting, my eyes still red, I'm writing out some of my memories of this man, partly because I need to act on the pain I feel after having read a recent post by my Aunt, sharing her memories of his life and death. She has written about her father. It is honest and raw and it has hurt me and shaken me to the core. It has brought him back to me through years of neglect. It is this neglect that also motivates me to write. I have not given my grandfather a thought in many years. I think I stopped giving him any thought while he was still alive. Me, caught in my self-involved, rebellious teenage years, had no room for an awkward, bumbling old man. I am horrified at my own hardness.
Remember him. . .
He is sitting in a pea green arm chair peering down his glasses at a book of crossword puzzles. An old lampshade, yellowed with age and cigarette smoke gives off a muddy half-light. Is that why he's squinting? I think this must be the most boring past time in the world, but he clearly loves it.
He is crouched down with his index fingers pointed, and he is heading our way. He's getting closer and closer and closer and we try and find somewhere to hide. "Punk!" He says as he jabs a finger into our ticklish tummies until we cry out for mercy. The older we get, the more we humour him with feigned cries of fear, and half-hearted attempts at fleeing from his "punking" fingers. We know it is one of the only ways he has ever interacted with us. We'll take what we can get.
He is driving me and my sister home in his squash-yellow hatchback car. Every light means GO. He goes through greens. He goes through yellows. He goes through reds. Sometimes hesitating and flustered part way through the intersection, but there's no stopping him. "Bapa it's red! It's red!"
I open up my birthday card and there at the bottom next to Bapa's name is a little cartoon of an ogre behind a brick wall, his big nose hooked over the brick. That cartoon is to be found wherever Bapa signs his name. It would be missed if it were not.
On his lap I can smell beer. Always beer. But he is the same Bapa no matter what he has drunk. I am too young to notice a difference.
Long overcoats, tweed caps, loafers and pleated pants. A shirt with pockets for pens. A bulging old man belly. White prickly whiskers and black hair. Black hair right up until the end. So black when Grammie was white as snow.
Grammie's companion. A pair. When she was gone, nothing was right anymore. Bapa wasn't safe anymore. Part of him was missing and it made him unapproachable. I lost my grandparents when I lost my Grammie. I think Bapa felt the same way.
This is my Bapa as I remember him.
