Five Lessons

Do you remember the day you were no longer a child? Not an adult yet, but no longer someone who could exist in a bubble of your own fantasies and wishful thinking. Do you remember the day your bubble popped and you felt the air of the real world on your skin for the first time?

Perhaps that’s a bit too flowery a way to say it, but as I’ve grown older I’ve tended more and more towards being a little poetic, a little philosophical and very introspective. I remember the day it happened to me and I can say with confidence that the lessons I learned that day have helped guide me to becoming who I am now.

Perhaps the way I’m phrasing all of this is making you think I went through some great trauma. The sort of story that you hear about on the news and can only really stomach because the glass of the screen is a barrier between you and reality. I wouldn’t say the experience was devoid of trauma, but there was nothing exceptional about it. It wasn’t something you would see on the news or read in a horror novel. In truth, while this day was important for some of us, it was quite mundane in the grand scheme of things. After all, to be mundane is to be ordinary and what is more universal, natural and normal than the death of an old man?

It was a warm weekend day. Not unpleasantly hot and far from cold. It would have been an unremarkable day if not for my presence at the hospital. My grandfather had asked to see me. My parents were against it. I was young and they didn’t want to scar or scare me. But how could they refuse a request from a dying man who just wanted to see his grandson one more time?

If my parents had said no, I would have been on board with that decision. I didn’t want to see him. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. We weren’t particularly close, but he had never been unkind to me. Blunt perhaps, a bit uncompromising. But not unkind. I was fearful of what I might see in that hospital room. The reality of my own mortality wasn’t something I had really thought about until then. I had never lost any other family. I had never been allowed to have a pet. My grandfather’s imminent passing made my own life seem so short suddenly. I wanted to distance myself from it. 

Despite my disquiet, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse when he asked for me anymore than my parents could. In the end, I found myself alone with a dying man in the little hospital room while my parents made themselves scarce. I didn’t find out until later that he had specifically asked to see me alone. 

My grandfather had never been a large man. He had been below average height and his shoulders were narrow. But he had always looked after his health. He exercised, he ate well and his work had been manual labour right up until he retired. In the hospital bed, he looked withered. Like he was dead already. He was skeletally thin and paler than I had ever known him to be. The beeping of the machines he was hooked up to felt like they were there just to remind me I wasn’t talking to a zombie or ghost.

“You look like you’re going to have a heart attack,” he joked. “They’re not going to feed you to me and give me your years.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He had always had a good sense of humour in theory, but his brand of jokes never quite sat right with me. Then again, the atmosphere wasn’t exactly mirthful.

“Sorry,” I said.

He shrugged and the simple act looked like it was as hard for him as dragging our couch down the street would have been for me. A herculean effort for such a little gesture. All that energy to display indifference. “Nothing to be sorry for. I know I look like I might die any minute. Don’t worry, I’ve got enough strength left in my brittle old bones to survive until we’re done talking.”

I don’t remember what I said in response to that. In all likelihood, I didn’t say anything. I wish I could have joked back at him, made him chuckle. But I was always a timid kid and I was too afraid to speak even if I’d known what to say.

“Listen,” he continued, unbothered. “I have some important things to tell you. Your parents aren’t going to and I’m afraid that with me gone nobody is going to. You’re a good kid and your parents are wonderful to you. But sometimes they’re a bit too wonderful and I don’t think your other grandparents are much better. You’re pampered. You’ve never been allowed to get hurt. You’ve never been allowed to fail. You hardly ever misbehave at least, but when you do you get off too easy.”

It wasn’t comfortable hearing that, but I had heard him say similar things before. Truth be told, I felt a bit resentful as he said that. It wasn’t any of his business and I wasn’t there to be bad-mouthed or listen to him talk badly about my parents or other grandparents. If he noticed, he ignored it.

“I’m going to give you a couple of important lessons. Nothing crazy or complicated, but some of the hardest pills we have to learn to swallow. I want you to listen carefully, got it?”

I nodded. I still didn’t know what to say, but that small flare of anger had dissipated as quickly as it had flared to life. There was something about the gravity of the old man’s tone that pulled my attention in. As much as I had wanted to tune him out before, now I couldn’t even imagine giving him anything less than my full attention. He had said this lesson was going to be important and I believed him.

“Lesson one,” he said. “You’re not special.”

I couldn’t identify why, but I had felt like I’d been slapped. The words stung even though they were said without malice. I don’t think I’d ever actively entertained the idea of being special or different. Certainly not better. But that bubble I talked about earlier was being popped and with it the illusion of my being separate from the conglomerate of people that made up the rest of humanity was gone before I even knew it was there.

“I don’t mean that as a bad thing,” he continued. “None of us are special. Not me, not grandma and not your mum and dad. We might be special to each other, but to everyone else we’re just more faces in the crowd. The world isn’t going to bend over backwards to keep you happy, safe and unhurt. Things won’t always be easy. You can’t be protected forever. It’s better to know that it’s coming than be blindsided by it. Sometimes things are going to be pretty shit and that’s just how it is. What’s important is finding the good again on the other side.”

I nodded again, hanging on the words even though they brought me no joy.

“Lesson two: everything ends. Friendships, jobs, loves, lives - it’s all temporary. That doesn’t make life less worth living. But you need to learn to let things go when it’s time to let them go. Embrace change because it’s going to happen whether you like it or not. It won’t always be fun - I’d wager most of the time it’ll be pretty rough - but you’ll find reasons to appreciate it if you look.”

“Lessen three,” he continued more readily now, caught up in his own momentum. “People are going to tell you some things aren’t transactional. This is bullshit. If someone does you a favour, they expect that you’d do the same for them. If someone pays you, they expect you to do your job well. If someone gives you company, friendship or love, they damn well expect the same in return. Don’t ever think you can just coast by and have whatever you want. If you want something, you’ll put the effort in to not just get it but keep it.”

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“Lesson four: listen and learn. I probably should have started with this one.” My grandfather snorted and chuckled at his own imagined folly. “Listen to what the people around you are saying - especially people with more knowledge or experience. And listen to a lot of people. But make sure you’re listening carefully. Don’t take things at face value. Don’t let people tell you what to think. Be informed and make your own decisions. Don’t let yourself be manipulated and taken advantage of. Just remember that when you make your own decisions, you face your own consequences too.”

I believed him. It was like he said. He had the knowledge and the experience and unlike my parents he had no reason to coddle me. He never had before. I took his words as gospel.

“Last lesson.” He smiled at me as he said it, more warmly than I had ever seen him do. I felt that warmth flow across the room. “You’re a quiet, timid kid and you’ve been coddled so much that you’ve forgotten how to feel properly.”

“I don’t understand,” I replied. I was baffled by that one. I had felt the fear coming into his room, I had felt indignant at his lecturing earlier and I had felt the love in his smile.

“I don’t mean your emotions have been switched-off, I mean you don’t properly feel them. You don’t express yourself. You don’t say anything that might rock the boat. You don’t act out because it doesn’t even occur to you that you have the choice. The most important thing you can do is be yourself. Embrace your strengths, weaknesses and quirks - all of them - and wear them on your sleeve. Don’t go turning into a little bastard or anything preferably or your parents will curse my grave. But you’re not going to become a confident, honest adult with good, healthy relationships if you’re never honest about who you are.”

I don’t really remember what happened right after, but I remember it was a quiet car ride home. My parents asked me what we talked about and I wasn’t even sure how to articulate the things that had been said to me. I was still processing it. 

I look back on that discussion though and I know that was the moment I started to grow up for real. The bubble popped. The comfortable fog I had lived in had been lifted and now I saw the world for what it really was. Any discomfort or resentment I had felt was quickly forgotten. In fact, the feeling I had was pride because that was the first time someone had spoken to me like that - like someone who was maturing.

These days, the pride I feel when I think about that conversation isn’t for myself. In reality, truly learning those lessons and internalising them took me many years more. My grandfather had just put me on the right path. The pride I feel now is for him, a man who I had never really gotten to know and who I wish I had because more than anyone else in my life he had seen things for what they were. At least, that’s the decision I’ve come to.