Pop in this instance means Grandfather. We don’t call our fathers Pop in the American manner. Growing up, I called my maternal grandparents Nan and Pop, or Nanny and Poppy.
Pop was an alcoholic. He was sick for most of my childhood. Had a bout of tuberculosis when I was about five, and later suffered cancer of the bowel and it spread. He died when I was nearly 12.
He was a flawed man. He could make beautiful rocking horses, and did for all the neighbors. There’s a photo of my Mum and her brother playing on one as children. They never owned one themselves… He did kind, thoughtful things for everyone else but forgot to do them for his own family.
He chose favorites among his kids, and later among his grandkids. My mother was his favorite, and in time it was me. When my younger cousin was born, it became her. He hurt the other kids terribly by treating the favorite so differently to the rest. To this day, the resentment is still strong.
This week marked the 25th anniversary of his passing. I posted on Facebook to ask if any of the family were heading out to the cemetery to mark the occasion. No one replied.
On the day I went to my Nan’s house first. She and I were the only ones who went 5 years ago on the 20th anniversary, and I know on that day she was glad I showed up because she didn’t have anyone else to take her. This time when I told her I was going to the cemetery, she said “What for?”. I cried. I said “The anniversary” and she said “Of what?”. She hugged me and I said “Pop’s anniversary”. She suddenly realised it was the 17th, and told me she’d come. We went, left some flowers. Had a lovely chat and then I went home.
I posted in his memory on Facebook, and got an angry text from my brother.
It’s been 25 years and my family still treat his memory like he was history’s greatest monster. He was flawed. He made mistakes. He drank too much. He played favorites, and he didn’t bother to hide it. But he wasn’t a violent man or a cruel man. He never mistreated any of us. He loved his family, even if he was uneven in his treatment of them. He loved his football, and his dog, and his Sunday roast lunch. Most of all, we grandkids only knew him in the last decade of his life when he was so ill. They’re adults now too. I wish they could look back with adult eyes and see him for what he was - a terminally ill man in his 50s who succumbed to alcoholism because of his deep insecurities. A good man, but an imperfect one.
I wish someone else remembered him with love.
