My Da

Everyone has a name for their grandfathers. Some call him Grandad… the families without much imagination. We called ours ‘Da’. It’s hard to know why because I was a child when that decision was made. I had very little input.
My Da died of cancer.

He was old and had smoked pretty much all of the cigarettes ever, neither of which helped the matter in the least.

Before he got cancer a doctor told him a story. The story went: ‘Stop smoking or you’ll die’. It wasn’t a long story, it didn’t have much in terms of character development, but some stories don’t need those things. This one struck a chord with my Da, regardless, and for the first time in maybe forever he listened to someone else. Some good that did him.

Because of the doctor and because of him much my Da had smoked and how it wasn’t the 1940’s anymore and medical literature had caught up and the great-big-cigarette-twist was now common knowledge like so many Kevin Spaceys. Because of all of this no one was surprised by the cancer and what it did to him.

My Da was the only person I knew that was dead when I died. But even as much of a surprise as it was to be dead like this, I wasn’t surprised to not see him here, really.

If a children’s author were to write about him, they’d call him ‘slumbrous’ — which is apparently a word (the things you learn by making things up!). He was a sleepy man even before his body outgrew itself.

That’s how old people are. They like to sleep, and he was passionate about it. I think it took up where golf left off. Whereas he used to hit a ball IdontknowhowfarHowfararegolffcourses? he would instead sit on a couch and fall asleep to the sounds of the world.

It wasn’t even confined to couches. By most modern reckonings, you could argue the case that he was a sleepaholic. He would even do it in public, at inappropriate moments with little or no regard to the effect this would have on other people in the room.

He could be having a nap five minutes after waking up, such was his passion. But it kept him out of trouble.

Anyway, the point here is that I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see him here, wherever here is, when I died. Even if this was heaven, if I believed in that (and this didn’t look just like the world did before). Even then. I wouldn’t have been surprised to not see him.

The fact is, he could be dead — and properly — and he could be around here somewhere… just odds are, he'll be having a nap on in a sunbeam somewhere.