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Illustration by Erick M. Ramos
Grandpa sat in his walker in our living room, pale and resigned, positioned between two chairs like another piece of furniture. I don’t remember why he was off to the side instead of in front of the crackling fireplace, but maybe the heat bothered him. Or he liked to keep tabs on our family playing cards in the kitchen. Mostly, he slept.
I had asked him if he wanted to play, but he said he was too tired and that I would have to represent him at the table. Grandpa passing up an opportunity to crush his family? That was the moment I knew he wouldn’t get better. I checked on him during shuffle breaks. If he was awake, I would fill him in on who won, how they won and what my next move was.
“Grandma is cheating,” I reported, waking him with small bowls of chips and chocolate-covered almonds.
“When is she not?” he replied, a touch of a smile on his dry lips.
He would know: Grandpa was the ultimate cheater. He taught me everything I know about hiding cards in my lap, stealing pennies from the pot and miscounting. He often did it obviously – dragging a penny slowly back across the table – to get caught and hear our outrage.
“Grandpa!”
“What?” he would say, producing an ace and taking the hand.
“You already played that card!” I would cry with delight, climbing him like a jungle gym to get the card.
At first, I was terrible at cheating. So bad it wasn’t even funny. So bad Grandpa would tell me to stop or he’d quit the game. We always played on days I called in sick to elementary school. More often than not, I had a stomach ache that would last until the school bus pulled away from our driveway at 8:34 a.m., sealing in my fate at home. My grandparents, who spent their retirement working on our farm, were too busy watering evergreens or feeding cattle to take me to school.
Grandpa would come in from chores around noon, smelling like manure and alfalfa, his signature comb-over usually adrift. He was a big man with bad knees and tended to lumber when he walked, like a tree with its roots pulled up, teetering so hard you would think he might fall over. He’d join Grandma and me at the kitchen table. “So, you’re sick, huh?” he’d say.
I’d push some cards in front of him, throw in a cough. The three of us usually played a game called Golf. Four cards each, face down. You could only look at two before the game started and then you had to remember which two and their suit in order to exchange cards with the deck to get the lowest hand and win the round. So, of course, Grandpa looked at his cards several times throughout the game, and we’d chastise him for it and laugh. Then I would sneak a peek at my hand and they would tell me to cut it out.
My grandpa liked to win, was very competitive and didn’t suffer any fake-sick kids. But my mere presence at that table, when I should have been learning long division, showed an early proclivity for the art of deception. I think we all saw it for what it was – a chance to spend time together. And over the years, under my grandpa’s tutelage, my cheating skills morphed from simple childhood hijinks to tactical wins.
But before that last family gathering, he had been in and out of the hospital for several months. In the fall, after my first day of university, I had raced across the crunchy leaves covering campus to the hospital nearby. His smile reached the far corners of his room when I arrived. “I can fit a buttload of textbooks in this bag,” I said, showing him my grown-up messenger bag. “Look at that,” he said, eyes glistening with pride. When I asked him how he was doing, he gave an anxious shrug and his fingers scrunched the hospital blanket. I hugged him, tubes and wires batting my arms, and said, “You’ll get through this. I’ll let you beat me at Golf. Once.”
I didn’t tell him that I was scared, too. That I probably wouldn’t let him win; he’d have to earn it. It’s just what you say to make the green gelatin go down easier. Grandpa had laughed and wiped his eyes. And he would beat me, again and again, until that Christmas. I can’t remember our last game of cards but I’m sure he won or if he had felt generous, let me almost win.
Barely two weeks into the new year, Dad called me from the hospital as I was walking to class to say that Grandpa was greyer than the ceiling tile. They didn’t think he’d wake up again. I wanted to rewind time, to go back to that blustery winter night and sit with Grandpa again, hear him laugh at my failure to cheat without getting caught.
He died later that week.
After his death, I dreamt he and I were sitting at my parents’ kitchen table on the farm again, playing cards. He gathered me into his lap and I rested my head on his shoulder and he told me, “It’ll be okay.” Even though I panic at any unexplained noise or shadow, I think dreams might be a way for those we love who are gone to communicate with us across the plane. And I don’t know if it’s Uncle Jerry’s spiked eggnog or an undercooked turkey, but the veil seems particularly thin around Christmas.
Not long after Grandpa left us, I walked down to our barn to feed the cats – their numbers had dwindled by then, from 14 at their peak to around five. Despite being barn cats, they relied on a consistent feeding schedule and if we didn’t get out to the barn fast enough, they would hang off the screen door of our house yowling. When I rounded the corner of the barn that day, I noticed the door ajar. I peered cautiously through the darkness. A figure was moving around and in the faint light – it was Grandpa. I choked on my breath and the shadow turned, morphing into my very-much-alive uncle. The only thing we can’t seem to cheat is death.
Tradition and ghosts often float up from the pages of well-worn Christmas stories. It’s only fitting then that Grandpa would boo around in mine because Christmas hasn’t started until someone gets caught peeking at another player’s cards. Often now, it will be his true protégé: me.
Suzanne Johnston lives in Calgary.