Earlier this week, my great grandfather, or Pop as Daddy loved him as, passed away. Here’s a snap of the two of us and a few words Daddy wrote for him.
We’re all here to see off William Grant McDonald — husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, friend — Jim to many, Lazarus to some, but he’ll always be Pop to me.
A man with a big heart — he’s the grandfather I want to be.
He was all one could ever hope for in a grandfather and more. A fisherman, a craftsman, a sportsman (of the armchair variety). A man who poured love and affection on his grandchildren — even when we didn’t deserve it.
Pop was a traveller — but not always of the sightseeing kind. His overseas travel got off with a bang — trekking up New Guinea’s Kokoda Trail for a couple of years in his country’s service. We’d like to think all his many subsequent trips around the world were better… Some sixty plus years later Pop and Grandma made it to our wedding in Thailand — they even managed to fit in an elephant ride — Pop could have compared heart size with their steed.
So long ago now, but cast your mind back and the childhood memories come flooding in. The colours seemed brighter back then — bluer sky, greener ocean, whiter whitecaps, yellower sand — I can feel it, hear it — squelching up between my little-boy’s toes. The white noise of a grumbling surf and the tickling tease of an afternoon southerly. In the distance I can see Pop, his distinctive gait, khaki shorts, singlet top. Three rods abreast like flagpoles, the tacklebox and yabbie bucket cast to the side. He kicks off his tortured thongs and walks down towards the water’s edge, hands on his hips, pensive as the Pacific Ocean cool his ankles.
My earliest memories revolve around Pop and the ocean — beach holidays to Bundaberg, catching blue swimmer crabs in Brisbane waters, dancing between the breakers on the rocky headlands, casting long lines off North Avoca Beach.
When we were young, for Brooke, Erin, Lisa and myself, Pop was the loving Grandad who’d buy us each hearts on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We’d race to suck off their chocolate skins before they melted and fell to our clothes or the mission brown wood on the back deck at Avoca.
Later, he’d take us body-surfing. Having the ocean fill one’s every crevice and cavity with coarse yellow sand only to be spat out onto North Avoca Beach seemed like fun back then — but it exhausts me now just to think about it. I don’t know where his strength came from — it must have been that heart.
We all grew older. He may have body-surfed less but his heart just kept giving — a dance with Lisa at her wedding, a genuine admiration of Brooke’s art and a loving embrace for Erin and her beautiful children — his first great-grandchildren.
Up till the very last, Pop had an interest, and he always threw his heart into it — be it tomatoes, wood-turning, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, or a firm belief in there being fish to catch in Avoca lake.
He had a fine innings. It seemed in the last decade he was dropped in the slips at least a half dozen times. Be it Bradman or Lazarus, his heart just kept on going. He said to me once a couple of years back that he was going to beat It, that he Would Not Be Defeated by It. He said it with such a passion it startled me — but he was right — 86 not out.
He’s the grandfather I want to be.
Some say that when you leave this world, all you’ve ever had is taken away, but I don’t agree. Nothing could ever take away from me, my sisters, cousins nor anyone else here the memories of the best grandfather in the world.
I wish you could have stayed, I wish you’d never had to leave, but for the rest of my days, when I feel the sand, see the ocean and smell the thick salt air I’ll think of you.
Thanks Pop.