brian

“We had to let him go, love. We had to let him go.”

As he spoke, I saw the scene in my grandparents dining room exactly as it was. It was as it had always been. I was eight thousand miles away, but I was also there. I could see them: Nan was in the kitchen - that was certain - and Dad was watching her, a rough cheek pressed against the landline, and the dog was on the matt by the back door. Dad’s T-shirt was mucky with age, his brow furrowed, ruddy-faced and bristly, his mind pottering through the things at hand: me, and the tea, and Grandad’s death. 

Dad long ago mastered the art of tea-time-timing and talking, so his position suited him perfectly. The landline is in the corner of my grandparents’ dining room, above the wooden cupboard stuffed with all the papers and trinkets that I’d pulled out and pored over, over and over, as a child. The dining room is small enough that the coil of the line stretches easily to the bench if you want to have a seat while you talk. From there, the vantage of the galley kitchen is prime, so stovetop veg can be presided over when far flung offspring call, desperate to be home again. 

One thing is abundantly clear when I look back at the place I saw without needing to see: I didn't see him in Grandad’s seat. I knew he wasn't sat in Grandad’s seat. Grandad’s seat was Grandad’s seat and Grandad’s seat alone. Grandad wasn’t ever away, so the head of the table was always an occupied position. And besides: the seat made sense to him. He had all his bits and bobs in the drawer right next to his chair. If he sat there, he could elect to be part of all the conversation or absolutely none of it, if he so chose. Mostly he preferred the latter.

It always takes me aback, a little, when people ask if I’m close with my grandparents. I’m never sure how to do justice to the question - to me, my grandparents are, quite simply, part of the furniture of my childhood. It was me, Meg, Emily, and Luke: the grandkids. Dad and Auntie Ann and Uncle Ian: the kids. Nan and Grandad: Nan and Grandad. I never thought of them the same way as I did other old people, the ones who smelt funny and moved slowly. Nan and Grandad were robust and upright, and their house was the cornerstone of the good parts of our childhoods.

Nan and Grandad were who we went to on the weekends and for the summers and the Christmases. When we arrived, Nan would holler a genial “hell-ohhh,” and kiss wetly us after the dog did; Grandad would follow with a gruffer greeting, no affectionate gestures necessary. He had the unparalleled ability to make a “hello” sound like a retort.

We'd invariably all park up at the table and tea would be administered to those who wanted it. The table was the center of their little universe, and it never aged underneath all the scratches and spillages, the baking sessions and the weight of all our feasts. Time spent at it never got old, either. A million breakfasts and lunches and teas were had at the table, just how a million mornings and afternoons were spent outside the house entirely, striding against some canal or across some forest or through acres of sodden fields. I went over a million G2’s at the table, snaffled from Grandad’s daily Guardian, and the dog always lapped up a million crumbs after a good meal overhead. At the table, Grandad heard a million Penguin-wrapper jokes that he didn't want to hear, and we ate through a million main courses with a million over-boiled vegetables, anticipating a million toffee yogurts afterward. At the table, we gave Dad our leftovers, we made gingerbread men, we left Whoopee cushions, we snickered and we yakked and we sulked, and Grandad presided over all of it, a wry patriarch to his frenetic brood. Collectively, we became known as “the rabble.” Grandad probably coined the term.

As we grew up, we started to call Grandad by his real name. Brian was bespectacled, clean shaven, and methodical. He was always armed with a pen, a Swiss army knife, and a mental pocketbook of quips to be trotted out in a low stage-whisper, given the appropriate circumstance; a favorite was always an immaculately-timed, ever-infuriating Nat King Cole lyric: “smile, though your heart is breaking.’” As children, we were inclined to think of Brian a grouch, a curmudgeon, a stoic with a face that didn't budge when we descended into hysterics when the F-word (that is: fart) was mentioned. As birthdays and school years ticked by, however, the gradual warming was inevitable: Brian had always talked, but we started to listen, and - ever the man to appreciate an eager ear to talk at - he started to take us seriously. Or at least grow fond of the extra ears.

And despite his meticulously chiselled sensibilities, and his distaste for all manner of things - to include Tories and Americans, church and senior citizens - it became abundantly clear to me, in my teenage years, that Brian was one of the kindest men I'll ever know. I can say with conviction that I have witnessed some deeply beautiful marriages, and his marriage to my Nan (who, to this day, is a scurrying nymph of a woman) is the very best of them all. The worst words I ever heard cross his lips towards her was a textbook, jesting quip of his: “my love for you is lasting/like snow on the desert sand.” 

(Later in life, I'd have loved to have shown him the photos, taken from my own front door, that snow does, in fact, settle in the desert.)

His kindness manifested itself in so many small, gorgeous ways. His kindness was the glee of a wartime child, aged seventy-or-eighty-something, at the prospect of jam and butter, on the same slice of bread, and his refusal to let go of that little triumph, to let it slide while his grandchildren wolfed down luxuries he never had - that didn't exist - when he was the dark-haired, surly-looking kid I know he was. His kindness was there in his unfettered joy for his shed - a wooden outhouse that was only ever referred to as “the museum” - filled with miniature trains and traction engines and WWII-era aircraft. His kindness was there in his watchfulness; Brian was a man who strode ahead of everyone else on our walks because it was the right place for the man who loved his pack. 

And then there were the quaint little kindnesses, the little joys of his that he harbored with steady zeal. There was his penchant for thick-cut marmalade (woe betide M&S for taking the rind out) and ginger candy, and - oddly enough - ABBA. “ABBA Gold” was the only CD we could ever all agree upon on our drives to the canals and the forests and the fields that made each of us ardent lovers of the outdoors.

Brian didn’t frighten us, or coddle us, or prod at us; Brian sat back and quietly suffered his tornado of grandchildren until we became old enough for us to actually listen to the stories he'd told us a million times. We started hitting the milestones that, in his eyes, were metrics of success: A-level grades, university acceptances, and degrees. And he applauded our academic victories with a token, cursory, “very good.” 

My marriage did not receive the same level of affection. He was, after all, an American.

When I left for America I wept once. Just once. I wept when I left my grandparents’ house, because it might not be the same place when I came back.

And it wasn't.

The first time I came home, something was amiss. Grandad was - doddery. He swept across a stopping point on our way to Millet’s Farm into oncoming traffic. He walked at a marked angle. He was slower, and while he’d always been repetitive - which had always been a trait of his that lay somewhere between charming and tedious - he was more repetitious than ever.  

I left, of course. I went back to America, the land of the Trumps and the relentless weather. And between visits - almost two years of his waning life, and my own increasingly bizarre one - he was diagnosed with dementia. After a particularly bad fall it was appropriate to admit him to a nursing home. I still find it difficult to marry that phrase - “a bad fall” - with the sturdy, scathing man I’d always known. It better fits the other OAPs that Brian sniffed at. 

Nevertheless, the nursing home it was. The next - and last - time I saw my grandad was in the square, linoleummed setting of St. Katherine’s  care home. He was sat in a straight-backed pink chair in the corner, slack and thin-skinned. My breath caught the moment I saw him; he was an ember. He looked like a vagrant version of someone who might have been him if you squinted. No-one had taken the time to shave him that morning. He couldn’t shave himself.

We had brought him some peanut brittle, because - Dad said - he loved peanut brittle. He did express what might have passed as an exclamation at the gift. He ate it then and there, using his slipper as a plate from which he ate in the same methodical manner he’d always eaten. 

I remember that cloying, clinical excuse for a lounge like it was yesterday. The clock was stuck at ten to seven.

When he passed, Dad received the phone call at two o’clock in the morning. He “had a few moments” with Grandad the next day. I’m not sure what that looked like.

This Christmas, I'm coming home to an England without Grandad. I'm not sure what that looks like, either. It’s been six years since I was at home - truly at home - at Christmastime. I don’t know how it will feel to have the requisite Boxing Day walk without Grandad pioneering the way.

/

Dad said something else while we were on the phone that day, between his diligent veg-watch and my own inane witterings. The interesting thing about Grandad, he said, was that while his brain started to eat away at itself, his health was otherwise fantastic. His heart, Dad remarked, was as healthy as it had ever been.

There's a comfort in knowing that the man who, in myriad ways, gave a steady pulse to each of our lives, was still ticking onwards in a manner uncharacteristic of other men pushing ninety. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe it was all the walking. Maybe it was love. 

Whatever it was, I'm glad I got to share as much of my life with Brian Longworth as I did. Being at his table taught me the basic life lessons that I have carried with me, tucked close to my chest, across an ocean: that a balance between cynicism and goodwill can be struck, that there is joy in all manner of everyday experiences, and that it is always important to be armed with a pen. Amongst many, many others.

When I learned that Grandad had died, I made a decision. I decided to keep his name. I don’t know where I picture myself in the future, but I do know that Brian Longworth will always be a part of my identity, now, by name alone. And on the day of his funeral, I will walk along the canal here in Phoenix, and I will imagine narrowboats - scores of them - and I will smile, though my heart is breaking.