Remembering my Grandpa

16 Sep, 2022

It's been a sad week for my family this week, my maternal grandfather passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89. Grandpa had been battling ill health for some time as well as having to come to terms with Grandma's passing in 2020¹. Seeing such a strong an active person so physically reduced has been hard for his family and friends to watch but that's nothing to the frustration he felt himself. For someone who, well into his 80s, was still kayaking weekly the mental toll of the last few years must have been incredible.

I'm very lucky that I don't have to wonder too much about my Grandpa's life. In my conversations with him over the last decades I've been able to learn a lot but since his retirement he also took up writing. I haven't had the courage to read his autobiography as yet, but I will². To set out a sketch though; Grandpa was a sportsman, something which we did not share. He helped found the discipline of Marathon Canoeing and was involved in the sport at the highest levels in the UK and internationally throughout his life. He was also an engineer by training and throughout his life he was interested in technological developments. In his youth he took up a job as Chief Buyer at Texas Instruments in Bedford and was with them at a time of incredible technological innovation. In his next life he designed and built kayaks using the absolute cutting edge of materials and processes³. As a child that meant that I was lucky enough to have access to a computer at a time when that was far from as common as it is today which I'm positive shaped my interest in the area. Grandpa was also a talented musician, he played piano and had a wonderful bass voice. He was heavily involved in amateur dramatics here in Devon and will be missed in that sphere as much as any other.

The thing I'll remember most about Grandpa is his interest in all aspects of life, the natural world, technology, politics, society, culture, music, art, travel, anything might capture his imagination. My grandparents home was full of books on all subjects and fiction from all over the spectrum. I'll never forget picking up an Asterix book I wanted to read and discovering that it was in Portuguese, he'd thought it would be useful to help him learn the language. Grandpa never stopped wanting to learn, in retirement he joined U3A as well as a group for retired engineers, he attended lectures and read constantly. He was always willing to be intensely frustrated by new technologies until he managed to make them do what he needed. Even in the last year he could be found writing poems on his iPad. He passed that interest on to me and we would often discuss the topic of the most recent episode of In Our Time, the books we'd been reading and so on. I always found it quite astonishing that he managed to be so devoted to his beloved sport while managing to be interested in such a broad range of other things. Growing up around someone like him normalised omnivorous consumption of information and a passion for lifelong learning which I aspire to pass along to my own children.

I don't think it's hyperbolic to state that without Grandpa's influence I simply wouldn't be the person I am today. My grandparents were always there to support my family and make sure we're comfortable, I don't take that privilege lightly. It's certainly true that the opinions we formed from the sources we shared we not always aligned, but even that has helped me in shaping the process of acquiring and processing knowledge. Grandpa was a curmudgeonly old man for as long as I knew him but he supported that with passion and love. If Grandma's legacy to me was to look at the world with love and embrace it with an open mind, Grandpa's will be to never stop being interested, to never stop learning and to share what I learn generously. Thanks to Grandpa I will always look around me, I will always be interested in what I find, I will always want to dig a little deeper, and I will always do my utmost to share what I know.

I'll miss my Grandpa very much.

#family #life