My grandfather was my savior. He taught me how to tie my shoes when I had just about given up and decided velcro was the safest way to go. He read me "The Night Before Christmas" every year about twenty times because I loved that book...sometimes I would beg him to read it in July just because I wanted it to be Christmas so badly. I can still feel and smell his soft cotton shirt beneath my cheek when I hear or read the words, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night...". It was a slice of heaven in my already wonderful childhood. I remember swimming laps in the pool with him on chilly summer mornings at 6am and him wrapping a towel around my skinny, shaking body when I crawled out of the pool, calling me a shivering, drowned rat and offering to make me toast-sticks and tea before anyone else got up.

Toast-sticks. They were his specialty; toast with butter and peanut butter, cut into sticks. He made them for his dog Tanny and called them Tanny sticks. He made them for me and called them Jenny-sticks. He knew exactly how to make a morning absolutely perfect. He knew how to smile and light up a room. He knew just how to kiss you on the cheek and make a really loud noise and how to hug you and crush your ribs with his long strong arms. He could rule my world and he did, every summer of my childhood when we would abandon our house in the city and venture out to his tree nursery near London, Ontario. He was one of the most amazing men ever to enter my life and I had the honor of calling him grandpa. I don't think I recall a time in my life when he wasn't there; either right in front of me, being sweet and kind and encouraging or on the other end of a letter or telephone...He was one of the most compassionate and understanding men I have ever had the extreme pleasure of knowing.

I remember when my grandmother passed away, about fifteen years ago. He was fully prepared to follow her then; his life was hers and she took it with her when she died. That was possibly one of the first displays of real, true love that I had ever witnessed. It was sad and inspiring at the same time; I knew then that it was possible and would strive over the next twelve years to look for that sort of companionship...that sort of love and mutual respect. I always dreamed that he would see me find it, one day. That he would be at my wedding to see me living out that sort of legacy that he'd passed along. Is it terribly selfish of me to be upset that he never saw that I am engaged in that sort of bond? Is it horrible and self-centered of me to wish he was still around so that I could have at least been able to see him, one more time?

My sister and I had a trip planned out to see him at the end of August the year he died. It would have been his 90th birthday and we decided that it was important for us to go. We knew he was sick and we were beginning to accept that he was not in fact going to live forever (as we had so childishly assumed when we were young) but I suppose that even in our adulthood and wisdom-filled grown-up-ness, we still didn't actually believe that he would ever leave us...especially without allowing us to say good-bye. A friend said at the time that perhaps it was better that way. That sometimes when you see an older relative in their last days or months that you see merely a shadow of what they formerly were. This then clouds your memory of what they were to you and you only remember the frailty of their death, rather than the vibrancy of their life. I do agree -- to a point. I think the nurse in me craved to run my hand across his forehead one more time. To kiss him on the cheek and hear him laugh in his chest and smooch me back in the old way he always had. Perhaps the healer in me desired to hold his hand one more time and tell him that I loved him and look into his eyes at the wisdom and years that lay behind them. Do you think that is conceited? Self-centered? Wanting that which I can never have...now that I cannot have it at all? I can't decide.

All I could see this morning as I walked to work was the day he taught me to tie my shoe laces. We spent an entire afternoon out on the veranda, my foot in his lap and his hands tying the knots over and over and over again. He held my tiny hands in his large, assured ones and made me make the motions until I could do it by myself. No grand-daughter of his was going to have to wear velcro shoes if he had anything to say about it. I do believe that a great deal of my stubbornness comes from the Fidler side of the family; a family of strong, tall people who stand with their feet planted firmly in the ground and their heads just above the tree line. A group of people I have long-admired and loved for their stubbornness and desire to succeed far beyond the reaches of normal expectations. As my running shoe came undone for the fifth time on the walk and I leaned over to do it up, I realized what was happening. It was as though he was there, coaxing me along to do it and do it right. He held my tiny hands in his large assured ones and guided me to where I needed to be to deal with that which I had to deal with. I stood there, on the corner with one foot propped up on a cement block, tying my shoe and laughing and crying at the same time. He was gone. I will never see him again and for that I grieve. I loved him. I love him. I always will.

I went home and made myself some toast-sticks and tea...just the way he had so many times when I was little...