The Bran..r Ultimatum

The perfect excuse to procrastinate for a while longer.

I open my eyes and all I see is blue celestial sky, not one cloud, and the dry branches over my head, the yellow leaves threatening to fall on my very nose if I dare to lie on the freezing stone bench under the sun for another hour.

His eyes were this colour. I must remember to take a picture.

My feet are numb. So are my fingers and, more worryingly, my head.

He would have opposed. He would have told me to go ahead and do whatever I had planned on doing for the day. The eternal engineer, the hard worker.

Or, read a book, M. Go watch the Bourne Ultimatum. Sleeping beauty on holiday.

As soon as he learned I was coming back last summer he started planning how to get to Lake Louise without being able to walk as such. The engineering miracle included the hiring of a van and a ramp. He managed to accompany us to hiking trips in the Rockies (getting all the fresh air too).

I suppose it's not about having to use a mobility scooter. I suppose it's about loving life and your people. Your lovely people.

He was a bookworm, a pillar, talking History. Discreet, intelligent, effective, practical. He knew what had to be done and did it. Always reliable, always there.

It's almost as if he had chosen to die on a Sunday so as to cause the least inconvenience.

He has left everything well tied and thought of. He even gives me a day's rest, to cry my soul out, before the busier exam week, which is when one seldom has time to think. Then, a week's holiday in Lanzarote.

For crying out loud, Granddad, did you ever do anything wrong?

Nothing except dying, eh?

He would have laughed at that. We talked for hours at a time last summer in Calgary, and after, when he phoned. He would have laughed at so many other things that I'll live and he won't.

He deserved a bunch of running-around Spanish and Canadian great-grandchildren that he'll never meet.

The thought makes me close my eyes again on the bench in Calixto and Melibea's Garden.

There's a cat. I call her Padfoot, she's grey and wears white socks. She's been following me today because I looked her in the eye and we connected, weird though it may sound. Animals have a sixth sense for pain shared, I suppose. I don't know what I have with cats; they like me. I wish I had it with dogs, they're usually more loyal. But I'm glad I connect with a fellow feeling being today, whatever the type, the race.

I walk around the Cathedral, down Gibraltar St., now El Expolio. Which reminds me bus fares in Salamanca have gone down again because we, the people, protested long enough. I wonder whether we'll keep it up or leave it at this.

I have no food for you, Paddy, I say in English, with a Canadian accent, in honour of my late Granddad.

But she doesn't care. It's about the eyes, she whispers. It's like you gave a lecture.

OK. I'll whisper to you, then. But only because you're alone, not lonely. Independent, not forsaken.

Like my Granddad Bob, spending his last winter in Arizona.

And his last summer, in Grouse Mountain, with me.

Padfoot disappears through a hole in a cantankerous doorway of the Patio Chico plaza. Two large stone medallions featuring huge men seem to witness the greatness of this moment; Padfoot deems necessary the leaving of One to Oneself, as if I had now become strong enough to continue on my own, forgetting that, like most Humans, I am stuck with my thoughts for eternity. In the Art Déco Museum.

He sits there on his recliner, sipping tea, telling me about the Second World War and how he was in Europe for five years until 1946. He has plenty of stories about Hitler's war and about my grandmother, I always enjoy listening for hours at a time. Sometimes, when he says her name, he takes out an old-fashioned cotton handkerchief and wipes his eyes. And then,

"You're a lot like her. So strong."

And I reply he might be right. I am like her, and like my Mum, but also a lot like him.

I'm only glad I got the chance last summer to tell him so.