2004-07-04 - 5:36 a.m.
It has been both funny and sad to compare the various obits and notices about my grandfather to the man we knew in the context of family. Only one article mentioned his inability to make small talk, and we all laughed in recognition, remembering family dinners where an awkward silence would be broken by him saying something like "Well, what do you all think about the situation in South Africa?", which would often lead to an even more awkward silence.
I think that in some ways my grandfather was a shy man. Over the years he'd figured out how to talk to colleagues and how to talk to parishioners, but as he couldn't talk to his family in either one of those roles, he was sometimes at a bit of a loss as to how to talk to us at all. My cousins and I used to laugh at our telephone conversations with him, which almost invariably went something like "Oh, hello Grandchild X, how nice to hear your voice, would you like to speak to your grandmother?"
And now of course I wish I had talked to him more. There was a lot in the various articles that I didn't even know about him, or knew only vaguely, in connection with whatever souvenirs it had produced for the grandchildren at the time.
People always say you shouldn't wait to ask the important questions, but with someone like my grandfather, it would have been hard to know exactly what question to ask to get at some of the things I've now learned. I couldn't exactly follow him around asking him random questions - "So, Papa, did you ever have lunch with Fidel Castro? Did you ever meet the Fon of Bafut, and what did he tell you? Did you ever sail on a mission boat? What about the Queen, and her tiara?"
Though of course there were questions I should have asked, should have known to ask. I guess those are sometimes the hard ones, and the ones you always think you'll somehow have the time to get around to...
