Today I write in memory of my grandfather.
His name was Columbus St. Patrick Brantley.
He was born in 1906 “up the swamp” in coastal North Carolina. Farming was in his blood. He married my grandmother during the Depression and worked as a sharecropper. My father was born in a tenant house. Just before WWII, Granddaddy went to Virginia to work as shipwright. He tried farming and house painting after the war but “couldn’t make a go of it,” so he went back to the shipyard, where he was still working when I came along. For the record: the whole family said I looked exactly like him when I was born.
He didn’t work on Sundays; that became our day together when I was small.
He retired when I was six. He and my grandmother moved back home and thus began my many journeys to the little white house nestled in the bend of an old dirt road, where the woods had grown up all around, taking back house after house where people lived no more.
In his later years Granddaddy recorded stories of his life on audiocassette to give to his family. He could remember seeing his first Model T at age three or four. He said that mail was delivered by horse and buggy; farmers ordered chickens that were delivered in cages. He had a whole string of pins awarded him for perfect Sunday School attendance at the little Methodist church. He loved listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. He spoke of his nine siblings, including a sister, Peaney (Penelope), who died of diphtheria at age four. He outlived them all. He lived to see both of my children. He could remember an ancestor speaking of Dublin.
Near the end of his life, I gave him a framed print of an Irish blessing. It hangs by my front door now:
The last time I saw him, he was dying of lung cancer at ninety-two. It was springtime. He’d grown weak but was fully dressed, sitting in his recliner by the door; he tried to coax my two-year-old to sit in his lap, like I did when I was little. I sat by his chair on a stool and held his old, wrinkled, work-worn hand.
Do you remember how we used to go to the park on Sundays?
I do, Granddaddy. We took bread to feed the ducks.
And the old locomotive?
I can just remember climbing in it together…
He was tired, always a man of few words. We sat for a long time together, not speaking at all.
When it was time to go, I kissed him on his forehead.
I love you, Granddaddy. God’s got you safe in His hands.
That’s the best place to be. And I love you.
He held tight to my hand.
It’s been twenty-three years. You can’t imagine all I have to tell you, Granddaddy. There’s been another pandemic. Wars and rumors of wars. Your great-grandsons are grown. The little two-year-old you tried to coax into sitting with you at that last visit plays piano and guitar; he loves singing the old-time songs that you loved. His brother’s a pastor with a baby girl; he tells me almost daily that something about your great-great-granddaughter reminds him of you. God remains faithful from one generation to the next. It’s almost springtime again, the fields are so green…
Until we meet again, Columbus St. Patrick.
I love you.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
lit bits and pieces 