He had to wear a ‘Forrest Gump’-type calliper which had to be clicked into place when he was standing and released to let him sit. He had two wooden sticks to help him walk.
When he was old enough to drive he had a contraption fitted to his car which allowed him to control the pedals from levers on the steering wheel- a crude version of an automatic.
His favourite game was billiards. I wish I’d asked him to explain the rules because I still can’t understand how a game with only three balls could last a decent length of time. He must have been alright at it. He told me of how he won a turkey one year at a Christmas billiards competition.
He got a job with the Liver insurance company. He had a framed drawing of their headquarters in Liverpool on his living room wall. It seemed like a huge factory type building. You could tell he was very proud of it.
I always struggled with the idea of White Grandpa being an ‘insurance salesman’. He never struck me as someone who fitted my idea of that profession. I think I was ashamed. When I turned 17 White Grandpa got me a good insurance deal for his car- so I learnt to drive in an automatic. I felt bad that his profession meant that I got it easy.
It was only years later that I began to understand more of what White Grandpa’s profession really was. He used to go round all the homes with a Liver life insurance policy and collect their premiums. When someone passed away he was the one who organised everything for the families. It was a far cry from today’s faceless insurance system.
White Grandpa met White Gran and decided she was the one. She eventually gave in after a bit of persuasion. She became his ‘Managing Director’. They had two children, my mum, Joy, and my aunt, Isobel. They are two of the most loving and considerate people I know.
During the War, White Grandpa served as air raid warden throughout the Belfast blitz. He didn’t ever talk to me about it.
When we came along their lives changed forever. We were everything to them. I remember his smile, and his laugh, and his happy eyes. I remember the big raspberries he blew on my cheek. I remember visiting their house in Greenwood Avenue and hearing him play the piano.
We used to go for Sunday walks along the country roads near our house in Ballygowan. We picked blackberries off the hedges and ate them there and then. One Sunday we were coming back along the Ballygowan to Belfast line and we found a number plate lying on the side of the road. Dad told me it was White Grandpa’s. A tractor had come out on him. Thankfully no one was hurt.
Dad got a job in Ballymena and we moved up shortly after. White Grandpa and Gran moved to a bungalow down the road from us. Every Sunday they came to our house for Sunday lunch. These lunches consisted of a dissection of the minister’s sermon that morning and my brother John making whistling noises so Gran thought her hearing aid was playing up.
White Grandpa loved God, but he could never say the Lord’s Prayer the whole way through. When he got to ‘and lead us not into temptation’ he stopped. How could his loving God ever want to lead us him into temptation?
He loved nothing more than to sit in the front seat of our car when we went to Portballintrae and look out at the waves crashing against the rocks.
White Gran got upset when the Social Services took away their double bed to be replaced by a single bed for her and a hospital bed and ‘winch’ for White Grandpa. I wrote her a poem called ‘Don’t Worry’. She just seemed to be getting smaller and more fragile every day.
White Gran passed away in an old people’s home. I can still see her tiny body lying on the bed, lifeless. White Grandpa hadn’t really spoken for months but you could tell he was heartbroken. His ‘Managing Director’ had gone. At the graveside a beam of sunlight crossed her grave.
A few weeks later, nine years to the day in fact, I visited White Grandpa in hospital. My Mum and Dad were there too. He wasn’t very responsive. It was his birthday the next day, March 12th. He had received ten or fifteen birthday cards which were stacked on his bedside unit.
More to break the silence than anything I took the cards, one at a time, and started reading them to him. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me, but I went through them all anyway. When I finished he turned to me and said clearly, ‘Thank you’.
We all started to cry and then he said, ’Thank you’, again.
Then another, ‘Thank you’.
‘Thank you’.
‘Thank you’.
He must have said it ten times.
We left the hospital and he passed peacefully away that night.
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William ‘White Grandpa’ Foye Holdsworth 12thMarch 1911 – 11th March 2003. |
