I never knew my grandfather, as most kids would. He like most men in my family had the habit of disappearing without communicating on his whereabouts. Like magicians or wizards, mysterious souls, he left and then re-appeared without acknowledging the breadth of time he vanished for without letting us know. When I was a child, I often thought he resided in a cave, or an imaginary world, in which time stood still. Perhaps it was the energy he exuded, a sort of timeless, a Liam-Neeson-ness; a quiet assurance and deep integrity.
His features often felt like they belonged in a noir film. Slicked black hair- not a trace of white, tall and lanky structure, his mouth hid beneath a coiled moustache and a plume of smoke. A greenish-black sickle and a hammer bled into his forearm. He was a man of few words my mum often repeated.
I didn't interact with him much, we didn't play-fight or talk for hours. He may have told me a few stories, but I don't recollect them either. I had an observer relationship with him. I learnt more about him through my mother, his daughter, than actually knowing him.I was far too shy to sit on his lap or hug the old man. My presence was reluctant around him.
He seemed more like a legend in a fictional world than an actual human. Perhaps that's how I viewed the men in my family, namely my father. My father was not remotely brooding or seemingly dark as my grandfather, but his lack of physical presence made him feel more like a legend. The stories that my mother shared about these two men, felt akin to the stories to she would tell us about her grandparents, and aunties. Like distant relatives, ancestors, my father and grandfather, two of the most unlike people, live in my mind like smokey characters- one smoky-er than the other. they are the best stories, I know.
I love them both dearly. I wish they stayed longer. One of them is said to have died in a tsunami in Japan at an under-ripe age of 34, the other vanished off the face the earth after my family migrated to Aotearoa.
I think their obscure "deaths" or as I like to call it, "departures" akin to airport terminology, adds to the sort of fantastical quality about their legend. As I never actually saw their bodies wither, I often let my thoughts wander; perhaps they returned to the transit world they resided in, in the first place.
My mother was the messenger, the storyteller, the communicator, the stability, the reinforcer, the weight of the men in her life, and the legends that lived beyond them.
She was the bridge between the worlds, theirs and ours. Like astronauts floating in outer space, lost in a mission, like tom hanks deserted on an island , many relatives, like my father and grandfather seemed to be MIA. My mother was the anchor weight that stabilised our inquisitiveness, our curiosity and main confusion as to the men who fell overboard and never came back. She traversed continents, sometimes even between these two men's continents bringing in their news, stories, wound with her memories, thoughts and experiences to us children. The knowledge we have of our father, grandfather, and other magicians other than our own experiences with them, have been tightly bound to my mother's knowledge and relationship with them.
While some may argue that her subjectivity may have tainted our "true" perception of them, without my mother's stories, and her encouragement of making our own conclusions in life, these legendary men, would remain, what a rationalist scientist would pronounce, dead.
Without her stories, the life breathed in these men, her personal experiences and encounters with them, these beautiful men, have resisted us from encountering them as strangers.
My mother would reminisce back to her dreams of working as an air-hostess so she could travel the world. After three, mostly unexpected, pregnancies and one horrifying vanishing of my father, another addition to the line of magical men and sometimes women; she did what she does best. She stifled her dreams to the darkest corner of her mind to push us, children, forward.
I like to think she has fulfilled her dreams of flying/ of travelling through her messenger- storyteller role. She may not have worked as a flight attendant but our father's departure only furthered one of the most significant roles she engaged in.
She piloted us to the other side of the world.
Whilst escaping the life that could have consumed us in our homeland, the life that didn't give us free choice, she sacrificed her own wants to further us, all the while maintaining a relationship with our lost, deceased and distant relatives through her stories.
22 in 3 days.
I can't help but think of these stories that live with me and my siblings. Life-giving stories, experiences and memories of my people, have breathed life into their dead, have taught me lessons of the past, have given me a stature amongst the unknown.
Stories may function as a legacy carrier. But essentially I realised they are a life-carrier.
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