Grandpa’s Solace

April 25, 2025

My grandpa passed away almost ten years ago, but I’ve found myself thinking of him a lot recently.

He had a challenging curriculum. He grew up and lived in Glasgow for most of his life, moving to Canada in the 1960s with my dad, uncle, and grandma. He was a boxer, a golfer, a sewing machine repair man, and apparently quite the dancer. He drove tanks in Egypt during the war. One day when he was working at the mill in Hamilton, there was a steel explosion which left him with one eye and another load of trauma on top of what he was carrying around from the war years.

This was, of course, all during a time when mental health was not spoken about very often and services were limited, especially for men.

But he always made time for art.

He was a painter, and I can’t help but feel that his art studio was his sacred space. He probably wouldn’t use that language, but I think it was that connection to beauty and wonder that was like a lifeline for him. It would have been a space for him to experience himself as something more than just an accumulation of tension. To experience life as more than an accumulation of challenges.

And it worked. His happiness was not complicated. He was known for commenting on the beauty of the daffodils that would grow along the verges of roads. Even with one eye and no depth perception, he still took great joy in golfing.

He was a very funny blend of an old Scottish no-bullshit grandpa, and a sweet, curious man who would paint the beauty of flowers and dancers.

Reflecting on his life feels like a call to remember the power of beauty to provide an insight into the way things are beyond the details of circumstance. I like to think that he poured his pains and his tensions into the art to be alchemized by beauty.

When he passed, I was able to go through his apartment studio, looking at all the works he had left behind. As far as I know, he didn’t sell them - it was all for the joy of it. He found beauty in landscapes, still life, people, and abstract works. I wondered if his life had been “easier” if he would have even turned to the arts.

Even on his last morning, he was so content, admiring the simple beauty of the sky peeking through tree branches. And I like to think it was art that taught him that. That in the face of whatever challenge might be presented through our curriculum in this life, building a relationship with the spirit of Beauty (that can be leaned into through all circumstances — even on a literal deathbed) is perhaps one of the most enriching things we can do.