“Have you done a bit of Grandad?”
My little sister stands in the ocean with the waves slopping over the top of her wellington boots. In one hand she holds a phone, recording each awkward guffaw, each nervous smile, and each dusty cough of grandparent as they are released into the wind of the world. In the other she holds the jar. She holds Grandad. He’s not looking his best, bless him. A little thin about the middle. A bit dry. A bit worse for wear.
No, sister, I haven’t done a bit of Grandad. I have done a bit of Granny though.
“Who’s who?” We remarked as we pulled them out of Dad’s rucksack. It didn’t take long to figure it out. Granny’s five-foot-nothing frame fit comfortably into an urn the size of a jam jar. She’s in the crook of my elbow like a tiny rugby ball. Grandad’s six-foot-three was more like a bottle of champagne. You need two hands to hold Grandad.
They’ve waited for this final send-off for years now. Grandad lived on top of the wine rack while Granny was still alive. When she finally left us to meet him again, her little jar sat alongside his, guarding the wine and preventing me from taking even the smallest tipple from Grandad’s modest collection. It’s not that he wasn’t generous with his measures, it’s just that when you’re overlooked by the crumbled remains of a family member, it makes you think twice about sticking your grubby fingers around the neck of a bottle.
One of the uncles was dead set in giving them a Viking funeral and though it would have been easier and less of a spectacle post-cremation, we restorted simply to dumping big dusty globs of grandparent into the sea. In some cultures they leave the body out on a hillside for the crows and vultures to pick at, returning the body back to nature. Giving back a little to the world around them. Our methods are much the same.
Sister hands me Grandad and I pass Granny backwards down the line towards my waiting Brother. He’s not done either of them yet.
Wind’s picking up, risking a good face full of precomposed grandparents. Chuck them with the wind. Get them close to the water. Avoid the waves. Try not to fall in.
The tide is coming in and the modest crowd of big and small children follow it step by step closer to the shore. Those doing a bit of the grandparents remain shin deep in the ocean, balancing on smooth Cornish rocks, bent low against the wind and trying not to do too much of either grandparent so everyone gets a go.
Holding an urn full of person in your arms is rather like holding a baby. You look upon a baby’s face, smell its head and listen to its babbling and you think of the decades that they will see. Graduations, weddings, birthdays, funerals. The smiles, the frowns, the new and the old. An urn is much the same. You hold everything a person ever was, and everything they ever will be again. In these ashes is Grandad’s dodgy heart, his chest scars from all his surgeries, his well worked hands and his mischievous grin. There’s his time in the blitz, his first date with Granny, the birth of his sons. I stare down into the gravelly depths of the urn and Grandad stares back with a grin and a wink.
From Grandad I learned to work hard. His life was movement punctuated only by the shortest naps in his favourite chair. He’d awake in an instant, stand, and continue his task. He’d cook, he’d garden, he’d paint. Anything worth doing was worth doing well. From a nearly-dead cutting of vine he grew grapes enough to fill his greenhouse. The wine and the jam reminded me of summers on Cornish beaches, where I’d push my feet through the top of the hot dry sand into the cool dampness below.
His naps grew longer, his work grew shorter. The garden overgrew him, his handmade pastilles and paints remained locked in a cupboard. They hired a gardener to cope with the encroaching nature, and Grandad hid in the back bedroom away from the pulling of weeds and hacking of treasured flowers.
From Granny I learned patience. To live with a house of only boys, from Grandad to my Dad and my uncles, it was a miracle she didn’t kill the lot of them. When, as a child, my Dad tore his leg open having fallen off a pile of bricks, she simply scooped him from the ground and drove him to the hospital with one hand on the wheel, the other holding a reddening rag to the skin flap of his knee. Patience. Panic is a thing for other people.
She left us urgently, without pomp or ceremony. One day she was there and the next my phone was alight with messages and missed calls. “She’s gone,” they said, and that was that.
Standing in the waves, with Grandad under my arm, they each felt so distant from me. Maybe it was too long since the funeral. Maybe the time had let the absence heal over into a kindly scar down my chest. Wafting great clumps of Grandad into the sea was like shovelling compost. It was a necessity. A chore. Something you do to keep the flowers growing throughout the summer. His crumbly bits disappeared into the sea like a cloud in the sky, never to be seen again.
They sailed these waters frequently when they were young enough to throw themselves around a dinghy. Up and down and around the bay, feeling the tidal spray against their face. Back amongst that chaos they rest now. A little wet cloud of Grandad next to a little wet cloud of Granny.
“Everyone done a bit of Granny and Grandad?” Sister says. Nods of ascent and smiles float around the gathered crowd, wet and salty, finished with the queer day. We trudge back up the beach in silence. The rushing sea drones behind us and the seagulls call overhead. Maybe they think we’ve spread some food. Some of them dive towards the point and I like to think Granny would laugh to know some poor gull mistook her for something tasty.
It’s funny that the ashes to ashes speech seems only to appear in hole-in-the-ground funerals. Not so many ashes there. Not so much dust. Had the wind changed, my face would be white with Grandad. Not so if we simply lowered him slowly into the ground. Worm food or onto a better place or wherever. Back to nature. Back to the world.
We’ll never see them again, now. It used to be that even with them confined to a jar you could unscrew the cap and peer in and say “hello, Granny.” But no longer. Now they are gone. Perhaps in the coming weeks and months and years we will return to these shores, look upon the crashing waves standing with our toes in the silt. A bit of Granny under a left foot and a bit of Grandad under a right.
A big bit done so late in the life is no substitute to little bits here and there. Never again will I tour the garden a pace behind Grandad while he describes his favourite flowers or points out the thriving new additions. Never again will I sit down to a feast from Granny’s kitchen. Never again will I sit in their small front room with a vat of tea listening to their stories and watching smiles bounce around the room. These are the bits I wanted more. The final throw of dust into the ocean is no substitute for the little bits of happy family I’ll never see again.
We follow our tracks up towards the rocky edge of the beach and into a small coffee shop where we set up all of us around a tiny picnic bench outside despite the cold and the rain. The faded umbrella saves us from the worst of it, but the patter of droplets seeps into the back of my shoes. I glance around the faces, all unsure how to look. None of us know the right expression that says we’ve finished dumping the dusty remains of our dearest family into the sea. I catch eyes, and each of us settles on a quiet smile, accepting the oddity and reflecting on the moments we shared with each of them.
On this day everyone did a bit of Granny and everyone did a bit of Grandad.