When I was a little girl I would spend the summers with my grandfather by the sea. My older brothers and sisters would be with their friends, doing things that older kids did, but no matter what else was happening all I wanted to do and the only place I wanted to be was at the seaside with my grandfather. It might seem a bit strange for a little girl to enjoy waking up early each morning and going out in a rickety wooden dinghy with an old man in the twilight of his life but I treasured those dim early mornings as dearly as other children would have a pony on their birthday. My friends thought I was crazy for going out to sea with him, after all if I fell in who would save me?
They didn't understand, even my parents didn't really understand. I saw it in my grandfather's hands as he rowed his boat through the surf each morning and afternoon. Those strong, salt-licked and calloused hands. So long as he had those hands, nothing could ever happen to me.
Of course there was also Basque, my grandfather's big white sea-dog. He loved the sea almost as much as I did and would paddle alongside us as my grandfather rowed and set his line. I would hang off the edge of the boat, looking down at the dark waters below and imagine all that might be beneath us. Once the line was set, that was my favorite time of all. That was when Grandfather would sing.
Looking back at it now, perhaps his voice wasn't the magic that I imagined it to be when I was a child. It was cracked and coarse, like the planking on his cabin, but it was strong and it sounded as true as any operato to me. He sang of the sea and what lay beneath and beyond its depths and horizons. Of graceful seabirds that flew across the endless blue and mighty krakens that swam beneath the blackness of its depths. Of sailing ships and commodores, pirates and mermaids and vast canvases of sails and the sailors that crewed them.
Hanging off the edge of the boat as I did I imagined the things he sang of conjured beneath us in the dark waters. The swirling tides became the flighty flicks of a mermaid's tail. The drifting seaweeds were the tentacles of a vast kraken waiting in the depths. I was never afraid though, my grandfather's hands and voice were there. He kept these wondrous things at bay and us safe upon our little rowboat even amidst the vastness of the sea.
I asked him once, when I was older, why he sang. He simply smiled at me, beckoning me from my perch to come sit with him a the head of the rowboat. I did so, sitting upon his knee as one of those lovingly calloused hands wrapped around me. He told me that he sang because that was the way of things. That there were things in the sea best left to their own devices and that the songs existed to remind us and placate them.
I didn't understand then, perhaps I was too young or simply couldn't understand why things were the way they were but I trusted my grandfather and from then on I sang with him when we rocked upon the waves. I'd like to think he enjoyed that. He never said anything, just smiled at me when the songs were done and the line drawn in. It was enough to see his bright eyes and cracked lips smiling like that, it made my heart soar high above the waves with the gulls.
Each night grandfather would tuck me into the single bed in his cabin and sit down by the fireplace with its burning driftwood and seaweed. I would fall asleep listening to him hum as he puffed on his wooden pipe, puffing on strange smelling tobacco as my mind drifted off into dreams filled with the wonders of the sea. Waking from those dreams of the ocean I would find my grandfather already up and preparing our breakfast. He never asked me to help once in all the years I visited him but I always did.
My father often said that Grandfather never thanked anyone for anything, he simply accepted whatever it was they decided to do. Perhaps that's why everyone else thought he was rude or too gruff, but I think that they just didn't understand him or how lonely he was. I did. I always did. It's why when he left me alone that it hurt all the more.
It broke my heart when Grandfather passed away. We got the message from his doctor right after I started college. He'd been found sitting in his chair by the fireside of his seaside cabin with Basque laying besides him. The doctor swore that he'd never have realized my grandfather had passed, seated as he was with his back straight and his pipe clenched in his hand as its embers burned gently.
I missed a week of class to come back and be there at his funeral. They'd wanted to bury him in the family plot but I wouldn't let them. Grandfather would never want to be bound to the land. He'd want to be at sea. We cremated Grandfather and took him up on the bluffs overlooking the sea near his cabin as the minister spoke his holy words. They felt empty and hollow without the warmth of my grandfather's gruff voice.
Despite everything I couldn't cry during the funeral, not at first, and I hated myself for it. I wanted to cry. I wanted everyone to know just how much I missed my grandfather. It wasn't until the minister called the family up to set the ashes free that things changed. My father handed me the urn and told me that I should be the one to set Grandfather upon the winds and unto the waves.
I took the urn, clutching it to my chest as I opened it and began sprinkling the ashes upon the sea breezes. I don't know why, even to this day, but I started to sing as Grandfather's ashes blew out over the bluffs and across the sea. I sang of the sea and what lay beneath and beyond its depths and horizons. Of graceful seabirds that flew across the endless blew and mighty krakens that swam beneath the blackness of its depths.
I sang the songs of the sea that my grandfather's voice had once carried upon the waves and in that moment I felt him there with me as he sang them with me. I had felt all alone until that moment, as if he had left me adrift upon the waves without his hands to guide me. However as I sang the songs and my first salty tears trickled down my cheeks I felt those old calloused and sea salted hands holding me as they always had. It might not seem like much to everyone else, but I know he will always be there for me, so long as I remember the way of things and the songs of the sea.