Grandpa

My Grandpa fought for Freedoms

in the First and Second World Wars

(freedom from cruel dictatorships

spreading tyranny’s global reach…

like freedoms ‘just to live’, be who we are,

freedom of movement, of livelihood,

privacy, personal beliefs, free speech…

those rights and freedoms denied so many

or willingly given up to feel ‘safe and secure’.)

Wounded, then diagnosed with cancer,

the Doctors gave him a different fight,

‘not long to live’, they told him.

So, he fought again to stay alive

a little longer for people he loved

and for a garden full of flowers

that was his passion and his pride.

He wrote poetry in long, harsh Winters

in his chair by the frosted window.

Growing up with Grandpa and Grandma,

I’d often hear him in his ‘drill voice’ say,

“Dorothy, how do you spell…?” or

“What word rhymes with…?”

Grandma was his ‘go to’ in those days.

Poetry, for him, always needed to rhyme.

Perhaps his poems and flowers ‘saved’ him,

sharing his life that much longer

by staying with us and his flowers

well past his Doctors’ prognosis ‘deadline’,

fighting on for a good twenty years more.

Grandpa had left behind the horrors of War

and found Life well worth living

by creating beauty with love of sharing-

that opposite of the legacies of War.

That was my Grandpa, my hero, my mentor

who still inspires me to this day.

(Grandpa signed all his poems Charles H. (Chuck) Thicke)

February 25, 2023

Shelley Audrey Wilson

Victoria, BC