There are those who say and those who have done. And in the same order, there are fathers and grandfathers. And when we are young, we don’t want to hear anything, so, quite naturally, we listen less to the former, but we look with a little more attention to the latter.
Perhaps it is because we know, intuitively, at a young age and before we have even been told about death, that the latter leave before the former.
Perhaps, too, it is because the generation which separates grandfathers from their grandsons allows sufficient distance to allow caring listening, without all the preconceptions in which father-son relationships are entangled.
Mine, my grandfather, was my role model.
He ran a business, and so did I.
He had four children, and so did I.
When I moved into my first apartment, he came to help me completely paint it. It wasn’t his back pain that was going to stop him from painting it up to the ceilings.
When I was little, grandpa rented a family cottage during the holidays, one of those cottages with an orange roof, on the shores of Lake Orford, that you see when driving on Highway 10. the family gathered there between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
After a hearty dinner, Grandpa invited me to go for a walk. We both went there, while the evening dragged on in the chalet. Five minutes of walking later, Grandpa took out a cigarette.
— Don’t tell Grandma! It’s our secret.
This is probably the main thing that distinguishes grandfather–grandson relationships from father–son relationships: they can be host to big and small secrets.
I knew that smoking was not one of the recommendations that Grandpa had received from the doctor following his two heart operations. But I was happy to be the confidant of something forbidden, and in that moment I knew that I too could eventually confide in him, if necessary. Parenthood is incompatible with this pure complicity, which falls within the exclusive domain of grandparenthood.
In my mid-20s, Grandpa gave me his old white Ford Escort with red velor bench seats. I couldn’t help but feel a little affection for the little burn marks that had melted the velvet at the crotch of the driver’s seat: Grandpa had continued to smoke in secret. – our secret.
Grandpa was a big, superactive guy. But his back pain didn’t let him go. This is because, ultimately, what should have been common back pains, common to almost all old people, were not; it was lung cancer.
Grandpa died too early, before I had the first of my four children, before I had time to show him that he was my role model.
When I started writing these few words, it was because I wanted to mark May 31, World No Tobacco Day. But it’s clear that what I really wanted was to talk to you about grandfathers and the importance of their presence in the lives of their grandsons. Tell you about the enormous privilege of having them in our lives.
I’m not an expert on smoking, but I am convinced of one thing: without tobacco, there would be many, many more grandfathers.
Oh. And one last thing: the grandparents of tomorrow are us.