My Diary Collection and Grandad

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I write a lot.  It started a long time ago.  Because of the amount I write it has become necessary to store my volumes.  What I don’t have in quality I make up for in quantity.  A typical example are my diaries.  Every day I recorded what I saw around me and felt within diaries big and small and I did this year in year out.  When I travelled abroad several decades ago these needed to be stored safely.  I chose my cousin Del to be my custodian.  One because she has a huge house in Belfast and therefore room, two because she is trustworthy and three because she has such a huge heart I knew she wouldn’t say no.  This is how I abuse those closest to me! 

In the past week after a period of well over 20 years of storage, I asked for the diaries to be returned and my sweet cousin brought them back to me.  I chose at random one of the dairies and began to read and then finally weep.

It was written in 1979, when I was 16 and scrawled on the back cover was written

“To the dead we feel sorrow

To the dying we feel commiseration

But to the living we leave no tomorrow”

I was not a cheerful puppy, evidently.  Entry on Jan 1, 1975, which was a Wednesday, at exactly 1.15pm  

“The nurse called early today before I was up.  Mummy tells me I am getting fat and the nurse repeated remarks about my eating only emphasised that.”

The fact that it was the afternoon and I was still in bed having breakfast says a lot about how I spent my day and how important food has always been in my life.  For the first pages I complain a lot about not having a colour TV.  In fact, I repeat this complaint almost every day for the first two months of the year.  Whining about not being able to watch my favourite show Kojak in colour was incessant.  Reading it bored me -  endless descriptions of every episode of that TV series.  Yes, you read that right.  I filled page after page with what had happened in each episode.   

I am furious with school, with people around me and with life.  I end one-page entry with the line with the one exception to that.

“Granda was very calm and is very pleasant and courteous.”

This drew my attention as my Grandfather lived with us and had already lost one leg to gangrene.  The nurse mentioned earlier was treating his remaining leg which had also begun to have gangrene.  I read on and discover later that January they had to take him to hospital to have this leg removed as well.  What appals me now is how I complained for weeks about nothing to all around me and, despite that, my grandfather took time to be nice and pleasant to me while facing an operation that would eventually kill him.  Such is the gross and sad self-centredness of teenagers. 

On the 19^th of January I came across a poem that David, my cousin, wrote for our grandfather and which I carefully recorded in the diary.

“As a youth he fought his country’s foes

And struggled in many a field of bloody strife

Such was the glorious dawn

To a happy life

He older grew and had a smile for all

And all who knew him loved his cheery ways

They blessed him for his help

On troubled days

And now although in patient’s bed he lies

The robes of melancholy will not don

The spirit of a soldier

Marching on.”

I remember being told that my grandfather went to world war 1 aged only 17.  When he went to the recruiting office he mentioned his age and the officer told him to go around the room and queue again and to say a different age if he wanted to join.  So, he did and fought through many battles including the carnage of the battle of the Somme winning a commendation for bravery in the process.  What a difference between his teenager’s life and my own.  I am struck by how tests catapult people into a different level of existence.  I am reminded of his bravery that was so much a part of him we almost took it for granted.  His lack of fear and his good humour. 

When he was very ill one tactless old neighbour visited Granda, looking so poorly in bed with his missing legs, and said “Ach Ben, if you were a horse I’d shoot you!”  I remember Granda laughed out loud in response.  He never felt sorry for himself and he met with all that life threw at him with a brave heart and a smile.

I visited his grave this week and was struck that the three people interred there together all showed me so much love that I cannot put into words how thankful I am to have had them in my life.

“I adjure Thee by Thy might, O my God!

Let no harm beset me in times of tests, and in moments of heedlessness guide my steps aright through Thine inspiration. Thou art God, potent art Thou to do what Thou desirest. No one can withstand Thy Will or thwart Thy Purpose.”

—The Báb