7 June 2007

I was seated beside my Pop the night he passed away. He had been in Aldersgate for a bit over a year, and I had only been to visit a handful of times. My Dad visited his Dad overnight without fail. I feel I failed my Pop by not going to see him. When I realised this it was too late. On the night he passed, we had received word from the nurse that he was fading. The family gathered and we took turns going into see Pop. He appeared asleep. Nurses would check him every 15 minutes, and I believe they were administering morphine. When the time came, I had my hand on his bed and I was talking to my Dad and my cousin about my landscaping. I heard Pop breath and little deeper and then he stopped. I looked at my Dad and we realised he was gone.

The following passage is an adaption of the eulogy I wrote for Pop upon his death at 88 years old, in 2007. I was unable to deliver the eulogy due to my grief and anxiety. I document it here to honour my paternal grandfather, and share some insights into how his life influenced mine.

I am my Pop’s fourth grandchild. For almost 15 years I was Pop’s youngest grandchild; that was before more grandchildren arrived and a swag of great-grandchildren came along. 

Being the youngest I was in line for some pretty special treatment from Pop. I believe it started when I was just over a week old – my first visit out of hospital their home in Bryan Street, Invermay. According to my parents the first thing Pop did was wake me up, poke and prod at me, and ask in his gruffest voice, “Hey, ya want a pee boy?”. He started there, and never let up. Pop was always teasing, tormenting and tickling.

Now everyone knows that Nan and Pop’s houses was never short of a lolly, or a chocolate, or a sweet biscuit. Pop had a sweet tooth. I remember as a child Pop presenting me with an open box of chocolates. With a smile I took the box, selected a foil wrapped chocolate, and began to open it. At this point Pop began to grin, and when I realised he’d wrapped up one of those little white peoples from the front garden he exploded into a full belly laugh.

Now, my father says Pop use to tease him about needles; that they were going to be the size of rolling pin and were going to hurt really bad. My Dad convinced Pop not to pass this fear on to the next generation, and he complied. So, while Pop was measured in his teasing, he channeled his efforts into other areas.

It wasn’t often that Nan and Pop travelled to our home in George Town, but then they did Pop never failed to leave a mark. Who could forget the day in our back yard when he was nursing our black short haired Chihuahua, Tini, and that twinkle in his eye appeared. He wandered over to the little waist high swimming pool and tossed the poor puppy in. He got a rise out of me, and then his laugh turned to a sense of worry as our dog failed to surface. As Pop rolled up his sleeve ready to reach in, Tini surfaced. We all breathed easy, and I could see Pop was relived.

Pop was not always so obvious with his pranks. Often we wouldn’t realise the full extent of Pop’s handy work until he had returned to Launceston and we were going to bed that same day. Reaching under our pillows for our pyjamas we’d find the larger, tightest ball of knots that would take an eternity to unravel. Of course we would seek to return the favour during our next visit, but Pop could always up the ante. As we got older I remember he deposited a Playboy magazine under my brothers pillow.

Now, the piece I put in the paper on Saturday made reference to Pop’s search for the perfect fishing grub. The background to that was Pop’s much favoured pass time of grabbing us as small children, trapping us between his knees, and tickling us until we practically wet ourselves. All this would happen under the duress of him threatening to cut off our private parts so that he had a grub to go fishing with any time of the year. Now I don’t remember too much before Pop’s hip replacement – after that his mobility was always a bit limited – so I worked out that if I keep out of arms reach I should be okay. Now the game changed the day Pop began using a walking stick – this became a prodder, and his ‘picker-upper’ thing – you know the arm extension with a pincer grip at one end and the trigger handle at the other – well that became a torture device of pinching and clothes pulling. After that I kept a wider berth, just to ensure I kept my manhood intact. Pop never gave up this game – when he moved on from me he had plenty of younger ones to tease, and torment and tickle. Having said that, even as an adult, taking a seat next to Pop was fraught with danger – a camel bite on a bare leg, a decent slap with his trusty fly swat, or a simple pinch to see if your were awake if he caught you napping.

Now I think I’ve inherited a few things from Pop – his receding hair line, his crook back, his sweet tooth, and probably his propensity for diabetes. Some would say I’ve also got his temper. You might not know that I actually inherited his passion for exercise – yes, I’m serious – when I was a child I believed Pop when he said he would run to the Batman Bridge and back at sunrise each morning. He did wind it back a little as he got older, his regime included a run to Rocherlea and back or around Vermot Road to K-mart and back. Pop was a fit bugger. No wonder he was always resting that chair.

Beyond the physical, I think I’ve acquired Pop’s interest in politics. As I grew up I listened to Pop and my Dad talk for hours about the woes of the world and the politicians who had failed to address the things that needed fixing. In his later years, on Election Day, when asked who he voted for, Pop would respond that he wrote “Good Fella” on the ballot. This was code for Pop writing ‘get fucked’ across the candidates names. I guess I can understand his rationale, you see in my living memory if politicians make a mistake the country goes into recession and people lose their jobs. In his lived experience, if politicians made a mistake, the country can go to war, and soldiers lose their lives. He had earned the right to be disgruntled, after all he had fought for this country.

Pop was a solider, a veteran of World War II, having trained in the Middle East, fought in Papua New Guinea and been part of the occupation forces in Japan after the war. Now I have little detail beyond this, as he didn’t ask to anyone much about his experiences, and he certainly didn’t talk to me. My first appreciation of Pop’s military past was inspired by a photo I found in the Sitting Room. Playing with my cousin in the room behind the Dining Room, we’d often look in Nan’s buffet and explore the trinkets on display. On one occasion we found a small square black and white photo of a street. We took the photo and asked Nan. She told us it was taken when Pop was in Japan. It wasn’t until years later, in high school studying the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that I developed a little more understanding of Pop’s role in history.