Grandfather James' Letter

“As I hold these bits of folded paper
I wonder what it is I keep them for.
A flimsy pen and ink connection
To a bloke who isn’t with us anymore.”
                                          Colin Buchanan
 
I heard my grandfather’s voice very clearly the other day, which was surprising since I’d never met him and his body had been laid to rest seventy years ago in a Maitland cemetery! In one of those quiet days after Christmas, as the old year shrivels away, I found myself in what used to be called ‘a brown study.’  That means you absent-mindedly drift into reflections on things past.
 
In this case memory was triggered by a three-page letter my widowed grandfather Jim Roe penned to his grand-daughter late in 1951. He wrote with a pretty neat hand considering he’d left school at 12 to join his father working in a coal mine under Newcastle Harbour at Stockton.

But the handwriting and lack of punctuation took second place to warmth of spirit that spilled minor doings of life around his weatherboard miner’s cottage in Telarah onto the yellowing page. He’d been following Nancye’s family’s road trip to Sydney, praying over every stage. He knew neighbourhood kids by name, reporting with interest on the threads and scissors Joyce Baldwin had shown him that her mother had searched out for her new sewing basket. He knew she’d got all her sums right as well and might even do better than her brother Herbert.
 
I suspect my grandfather’s own lack of education made him urge the kids around him to make the most of their schooling.
 
Emphysema from his lifetime of work in dark mines weakened his lungs but hadn’t dampened his spirits nor his faith. His gift for telling entertaining stories drew children around him in the street on his way home from work. He brought the Bible to life for scores of kids in Cessnock and Maitland in a way that stayed with them for a lifetime.
 
I knew from my Dad that his mother and father were chronically kind, in spite of being poor.  So, it’s no surprise to hear Jim tell how friends had gifted him a package of fresh fish for his lunch or that neighbour Mrs Baldwin had insisted on coming over to wash all his linen and scrub his floors while he entertained the baby.  Others were picking him up for a fishing holiday weekend.
 
Standing on the brink of a new year, Jim Roe’s humble letter spoke to his grandson out of the past, reminding me to appreciate the simple things, to be thankful for daily bread from the Father’s hand and to bring life into the lives of those around me.
 
Thanks Grandfather. I hope I can report I’ve done the same when we meet next.

”Not all of us can do great things but we can do small things with great love.”
Mother Teresa