My grandfather died on Christmas Eve.

I found out in August that he had lung cancer. Mom went to see him; I stayed behind with my brother and sister. I couldn't credit that he would die of this. It's one thing to be brain-aware of what cancer, gleefully swinging from organ to organ, will do to a seventy year old man. This was no ordinary seventy year old man, though. This was my grandfather, the toughest bastard of all. In my heart I was sure that if a freight train smacked him the train would be sorry.

His name was Morris Hubert Barton, and if I was called Morris Hubert Barton, I'd prefer "Chugg" like he did. I was his little princess. An only child for the magic number of seven years, of his only daughter. The Jesuits say they only need a kid for seven years to keep him forever; in a lot of ways I'll always be his little princess.

Back then we lived in the same town, Quesnel BC, and I spent a lot of weekends at his house. At the age where little girls want ponies, I had one, a white Shetland named Frosty. The joke was "bought the saddle and they threw in the horse". When my father, Art Johnson, died in a vehicle wreck, when I was ten, my mother moved us to the other side of the continent. I rarely saw my grandfather again... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The joke was that he wanted to be a Mormon so he could have three wives. When I was older, I'd add that he'd approximated this as best he could: three wives in sequence, with overlap. My grandmother Jean, with whom he had three kids, my mother Louisa Barton-Duguay, and Wes and Hugh Barton. I spent a lot of time at Grandma Jean's house too, and whether or not it existed, never felt she or Chugg were trying to score points off each other through me. I was spoiled equally by both and loved them both equally.

Then he married Sandra Spooner, an extremely thin woman who I always found sort of glamorous for her concern with makeup and clothes. I loved Sandra's grandmother (who I only knew as Nana) who read trashy novels, smoked and played poker with an obscene deck of cards. I liked Sandra a lot -- but when Grandpa split up with her, I was most sorry that I wouldn't see Nana again, which I never did.

Later, after we'd moved to New Brunswick, Grandpa got involved with Belle, who was to be his third wife. I don't know her well and I suppose I never will, but I like what I do know. Gentle enough to be tolerant of Grandpa's rants about religion and politics, many of which I was treated to when I was too young to be anything but amused by how upset he was getting over an abstract. Smart enough to keep him interested, though not an intellectual. I don't think Grandpa had much patience with intellectuals that were afraid to get their hands dirty.

Since I heard he died I keep having a goofy memory of out at his ranch (Sanbar Arabians, for Sandy and Barton). I would have been five or six, and we were in the living room listening to the radio while Sandy was in the kitchen. It was playing "You're No Good" and I was singing "You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, Grandpa you're no good!" I was laughing. He was laughing. Hell if I know if it stung; given his amorous habits it might well have. Maybe it did and he didn't care. I never had the feeling he cared much what most people thought of him.

He took me out there when my father died and I remember that my mother, and her brother Wes, were trying to contact people to tell them my father was dead before they heard about it on the radio. I remember staying up late, the clock pointing to 10pm partway through the evening. My other memories of that time are confused; my father's relatives taking over the funeral and my mother being upset about being closed out; his body being wrapped in a clean cotton sheet because he'd said that if he was ever rich, he'd want clean cotton sheets every day, not silk, but he liked how clean cotton sheets felt. His feet so swollen they couldn't put his boots on him, so they put them in the coffin with him. The horrible shock of going to a viewing and how little I felt after that. In a lot of ways I've never felt alive since.

They both had tempers, Dad and Grandpa, which I've inherited in spades, but they were both highly intelligent men who knew the choices they were making. My father, I think, was sorry of his, but I never felt that way about my grandfather. I didn't see Grandpa often after my father died as we moved the next year, and I'm not much good at keeping touch with anyone, no matter how much I love them.

I don't know what Grandpa thought of the choices I made. My father would have disapproved of how much time and energy I expended without producing anything tangible. He designed and constructed buildings, physical marks on the landscape, and he was always upgrading the house. A new kitchen, a new sundeck, new paint, new doors. He was also a mechanic and was restoring a two-seater 1918 International truck. He figured out how to get my Sherlock-Manning upright grand piano up the steep and numerous sundeck stairs to the living room (they laid down planks and winched it up on a heavy rope. I remember him joking about what would happen if the winch slipped) and I've always wondered how, without him, they got it down again when we moved. Yes, yes, I know, but I still wonder.

Whether or not Dad would have understood that I've done little that I realistically would do differently the second time around, I don't know. I don't know if Grandpa understood that. Grandpa might have understood more of my misspent youth, which isn't over yet by a long shot -- what a faithless lover I am but a constant friend, my own reckless passions for order and justice that frustrate me, and the overwhelming need to speak, to write, to tell, to listen, to hear, to know, and to apply.

I remember baiting Grandpa when I was twelve by mentioning Jimmy Swaggart's dallying and Wayne Gretzky being traded to the Americans in the same conversation. I remember Belle saying these were topics not to be brought up because they'd only make him angry. Grandpa watched televangelists for, I think, the amusement value.

I have no recollections at all of him losing his temper with me, ever. Occasionally with things I said, but even that was rare. I remember talking politics with him in 1994 and being upset that he believed in Preston Manning's Reform Party. I remember telling him in 1995 that I was going to marry Russ Taylor, and he said, "Oh God, he's not from Quebec is he?" and I said "No, he's an American," which was nearly as bad, and we laughed. He gave me away when Russ and I got married and I've never known what he thought about Russ and I splitting up a year later, on April 15, 1996. Russ joked later that at least I had the tact to pick a day that was already dreadful.

I am certain that Grandpa liked Russ, for similar reasons to why I did and still do. Russ is also a highly intelligent man with a strong temper. His temper and mine collided with disastrous effect. I still love Russ very much and I always will. But still, we split up, and now we like each other more. Much later my friend Shad joked that he'd take love wherever he could get it, and I said, "I'd rather be liked, it lasts longer."

Given Grandpa's own track record, though... he had to somewhat understand when the marriage didn't take. I've also never known what he thought of my becoming a writer, and he never read any of my theoretically more mature work (I was first published at the age of four) but if he hadn't liked it, I would've told him to get stuffed, and he would've respected that. I inherited writing talent too, from my father's side, from Alexandre Dumas. Later, though, when I knew who Camille was, I wondered at his taste in names. A courtesan who fell in love with one of her clients, a young nobleman, but refused to marry him because she felt it would destroy his life. Maybe there is something in that; hard headed practicality fights romance in me too.

Grandpa tried to retire from being a cowboy when he hit 65, but it didn't take, and as far as I know he worked up until he went into intensive care in mid-December. I hadn't seen or spoken to him since my wedding, I've always been embarrassed that I put my family to so much trouble, after so many years absence, over something that wasn't going to be around a year later. I don't know if he ever knew how much he meant to me all my life. I didn't advertise it much to him once I was old enough to realize it. He probably didn't know how proud I was of him or how much I loved him.

Chugg Barton was a genuine human being. He wasn't perfect, but he knew what he was, and if he gave a damn about being anybody else, I never knew it. I loved and admired this about him, and I have loved and admired this in a handful of others. Nikolaus Maack, the drunken writer and artist that I lived with for two years. Russ Taylor, my ex-husband, who does damn near everything he does damn well or not at all. The two nicest guys I know, Guga Albert and Shad Muegge, who sometimes frustrate me but who I always like. Holly Sommer, who has become a very good friend over the last three years. Garry Turkington, who showed me many of my habits that I must stop indulging. My aunt Anne and uncle Bert Vere, on my father's side, who I have kept poor contact with but that will change, because I love them. My grandmother Jean, who is also a real human being, which is the highest compliment I have. My mother, Louisa Barton-Duguay, who I have slowly come to appreciate as a friend.

My brother Dusty and sister Jasmine did not know much of their father -- Dusty was three and Jasmine only eight months -- and they know little more of their grandfather, never having spent had the kind of time with him that I did. They have no way of knowing that they can and should be proud of being descended from him. Not a captain of industry, or a brilliant scientist, not a mover or a shaker. A real human being. There is nothing higher than that.

© Gabrielle Taylor 1997-2001. All rights reserved. Contact: gtaylor@hypercube.org