Lessons From My Grandmother

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

–William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 (As You Like It: Act II, Sc. 1)

The Photograph

            When I was a little boy and all through my teenage years, I had a photograph of my grandmother sitting on my dresser in my bedroom. It was a colour photograph taken somewhere in the countryside near her home in Cobourg, Ontario sometime in the 1950s. In it, she was wearing a flowery, blueprint, “grandmotherly” dress and she was staring directly into the camera with an all-knowing enigmatic smile on her face. Her face was lit up and her eyes sparkled, but her smile was amazing. The best way to describe it is to say that it was a “Mona Lisa” type smile that enticed me to guess what was on her mind. I loved that photograph and I gazed at it every day for many years.

            I was her oldest grandchild, so that she and I felt close to each other. After she died, I became convinced that she was trying to tell me something in that photograph. I was certain that she was giving a message to me, and uniquely for me. No matter how often I looked at it or thought about it, I was never able to decipher the message which I was convinced was there. Later, after I finished high school, I went to a university away from home, my parents moved to a new town, and that photograph was packed up and became long forgotten. My moving to university was in fact a leaving of the nest for me, and I completely forgot about that photograph. It was almost thirty years before I thought of it again.

Mary and Ed

            My grandmother was born Mary Isabella Oliver on October 14, 1889 to a large farm family on their farm near Chatham, Ontario. There were three boys and three girls in the family and she was the fifth of the six children. The second born was her brother, Ed. He was born Edmund H. Oliver in 1882. It seems typical that all farm families are close to each other, but out of all of them, the two who were the closest were Mary and Ed, in spite of their age difference. Right from the moment of her birth, something about Mary seemed special to Ed and for the rest of their lives they felt particularly close to each other.

            As an adult, Ed was an educated man. He graduated from high school with the highest marks of any student in the province. At the University of Toronto, he majored in Classics with English and History thrown in for good measure. Graduating at the head of his class, he went on to earn his Masters, later earned his PhD at Columbia, and eventually became the Moderator of the United Church of Canada. Because of his fondness for his little sister, he encouraged her to pursue her education too. Ed had gone out to western Canada to become principal of St. Andrew’s College at a new university, the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, and because of Ed’s influence, Mary decided to continue her education there. At the university, one of her friends and colleagues was John Diefenbaker who later became Prime Minister of Canada in 1957. In fact when she died, he was the Prime Minister and my father received a very nice personal letter of condolences from him. It was also here at university that she met her future husband, my grandfather, Frank Percival Lloyd. (I was named after his father.)

            Her field of study was literature, because she always loved language and the power and beauty of words. She knew Latin and Greek, as well as English and German literature. One of my memories of her was that when I was a young boy, she constantly corrected any mistake in grammar I made when speaking. She simply would not allow me to use words in careless or unclear ways and was insistent that I express my thoughts clearly even when I was very young. (I hope I have been able to live up to her expectations.)

            It was unusual for a woman to be a university graduate in those days before World War I, but she in fact was the very first person upon whom the University of Saskatchewan conferred a degree. She was at the head of the first graduating class at the university and would have been a Rhodes Scholar had that been available to women in those days. It must have been a very proud occasion for both of them at the graduation ceremonies, as she walked across the stage to receive her degree with her dear older brother there on the stage too.

The War Years

            World War I broke out in the summer of 1914 and since my grandfather was younger than my grandmother (he was born in 1892), he waited until he finished his degree before signing up. He and my grandmother married in 1916, and then my grandfather was shipped over to Flanders Fields. Both his older and younger brothers were already over there, and his older brother had already been gassed in history’s first gas attack at Ypres in 1915 and although he survived the war, he died afterwards as a result of his wounds.

            Mary was now living at the family farm in south western Ontario when word was sent to my grandfather that she was pregnant. A tiny boy was born two months prematurely on January 17, 1917 back on the family farm near Chatham. A premature birth is serious at any time but it was especially so back then. There were no hospitals nearby and any medical care was unavailable too. There were no such things as incubators in those days either and with a very low birth weight, it was very doubtful whether or not this fragile baby could survive.

            Back in France, my grandfather and his younger brother fought their way up Vimy Ridge with the rest of the Canadians, but within a month, his younger brother was killed at the age of 21. Since his is an unknown grave, his name is today engraved on the Vimy Memorial in France, as well as in the Book of Remembrance in the Memorial Chamber on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Shortly after his brother’s death, my grandfather was severely wounded in August 1917 at Hill 70. He had received shrapnel wounds in the head. The shrapnel was pressing against the optic nerve and he was blinded.

            One can only imagine the fear and suffering that Mary had to endure while back in Canada. With her baby son fighting for his life and the news of her husband and brother-in-law’s wounds, and her other brother-in-law’s death, these must surely have been times of great fear, doubt, and anxiety. Her brother Ed was also in France serving as a Chaplain. (He was an Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Chaplain Services, and had been honoured with a Mentioned in Despatches.) However, even though Mary had the rest of her family around her, it must have been a very lonely time.

            My grandfather was invalided back to Canada, but was determined not to let his wounds hold him down. Due to his war experiences, in which he saw much suffering in the trenches, he decided to devote the rest of his life to the relief of pain. He had already decided to do this since his degree at the University of Saskatchewan was as a medical doctor, but he now enrolled in medical school at the University of Toronto to take a degree in biochemistry, hired a graduate student to read his lessons to him, and memorized everything. The shrapnel in his head was inoperable but eventually it moved and his sight returned. However, for the rest of his life he suffered severe headaches. He graduated with his post graduate degree in medicine, and set up a medical practice in Cobourg, which became the family home for the next two generations.

            He was a successful doctor in general medicine with special interest in radiology and surgery, but joined the army again in 1939 to mobilize and become the Commanding Officer of the 4^th Field Artillery in England in World War II. He was transferred back to Canada in 1942, promoted to Colonel to train medical officers at Camp Borden, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his service to his country. After the War, he returned to his medical practice and founded the Medical Centre in Cobourg. He lived until 1964.

            Between the Wars, Mary had three more children, all girls. As for the tiny premature baby boy, it is my understanding that he survived, – because he was my father. He too joined the army as a sergeant in his father’s regiment in World War II, was much beloved by his comrades, married his childhood sweetheart (my mother who had also joined the army to go overseas), and returned to Canada after the War to become a banker. He passed away at the age of 71 on June 12, 1988.

The Meeting

            Even though Mary had a family of her own, she and Ed still felt very close to each other. Ed died in 1935, after his tenure as Moderator of the United Church. Basically, what he did was to give so much of himself to those who had so little during the Great Depression that he essentially worked himself to death through exhaustion. Mary and one of her sisters could see what was happening, so they travelled out west to try to convince him to take better care of himself. But Ed would have none of it. He was spiritually happy and said that it was more important to serve God by helping those in great need, and his dedicated devotion was so exhausting that he eventually died. Mary was devastated at the loss of her dear older brother, but through her own love of God she accepted the loss and moved on with her life. However the pain of such a loss is always with you because it never completely goes away.

            About fourteen years later sometime around 1949, Mary had a severe heart attack. In those days there was no such thing as open heart surgery and there was little the doctors could do but make her as comfortable as possible. She was not expected to survive for long. Perhaps when our time comes, each of us recognizes it. I am certainly convinced that when my father died suddenly, he knew his time had come. We do not know the answer to that question because we have never been there, and those who have been there are gone, so that they cannot tell us what it is like. Nevertheless, Mary knew her end was near, but she was not troubled by this fact. On the contrary, she had lived a long life, raised four children, saw the birth of grandchildren, and was now joyful at the prospect of finally meeting her Maker.

            Late one night in the hospital, she went to sleep in the full and complete knowledge that the call had now come for her, and that she would not wake up. She was totally at peace. However, in the wee small hours of the morning, she felt a warm hand touch her on the shoulder. She opened her eyes and there standing before her with his hand on her shoulder was her older brother Ed, who had died 14 years earlier. Mary was absolutely astounded. She was completely at a loss for words. The two of them gazed at each other for several minutes with not a word being said between them. Finally, Ed spoke.

            He said, and I quote exactly, “Mary, what is the matter? Can you not lift just one more stone?” He then smiled at her knowingly, turned, and walked out of the room. She never saw him again. But she did find a way to lift one more stone because she surprised the doctors by recovering from her heart attack, and lived in reasonably good health after such an experience for another 12 years. I am so very grateful for that, because it was during these years that I grew to know her. She eventually died in Cobourg on April 19, 1961.

Woodlawn

            As a boy, I grew up several hours by car away from my grandparents, but my parents and I visited the family home often. The first 10 Christmases of my life were spent there and we visited at least every three or four months. They lived in a large home in Cobourg called, “Woodlawn.” It was a large wooded lot with many trees and flower beds. The house was built in 1835 and it was huge. Each room inside was like a big sweeping gallery.

            The front of the house had an open porch running the length of it, supported by six tall Greek-type columns. As you entered the house from the large oak front door, off to the right was a large dining room with a fireplace in it, and off to the left was a drawing room, also with a fireplace, with a small music room behind it. Down the hallway, the entrance to the kitchen was off to the right and another entrance to the music room to the left. Across the hall from the kitchen beside this entrance to the music room, was a winding staircase that led upstairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a large grandfather clock.

            Upstairs there were four spacious bedrooms, two of which had a sink and running water, and a bathroom at the back end of the upstairs hallway. One of the bedrooms, which was my father’s room when he was a boy and the room I usually used when we visited, required you to go down yet another hallway to enter it. At the front end of the upstairs hallway was a door that led to the outside open balcony which was directly above the front porch. There was also an attic above this floor but this was the only place I never explored because there was never a ladder available upstairs when I visited.

            Downstairs, at the far end of the hallway next to the entrance to the kitchen, was the entrance to the back porch, which was enclosed but was very long and deep, and at least the size of two large rooms. At the far end of the porch there was the entrance to the woodshed, coal bin, and the stairway to the cellar. At the other end of the porch on the outside, was a very small storage room connected to the pantry on the inside which in turn connected to the kitchen.

            Inside the house again, besides entering the huge dining room from the front hallway, there was also another entrance from the kitchen which was behind it, but out of sight. There was also another hallway running from behind the dining room by this entrance to the kitchen, down to what was once called the annex. At the end of this hallway were two small guest bedrooms, (one of which had a small balcony), with a bathroom off to the left and another hallway which led from the right into the very spacious family room with yet another fireplace. So there were three fireplaces in the house, each with its own separate chimney.

            There was a door in the family room that led directly outside to the front porch. There was a direct connection at the far corner of the family room to the two guest bedrooms and the bathroom from the rear. In the bathroom, there was a small door that led into a storage room and a laundry room which in turn led into the pantry, which in turn led back to the kitchen from the rear. So every room to the left of the main hallway was connected, and every room to the right of the main hallway was interconnected but this was not obvious upon first inspection.

            As a young boy, I delighted in exploring every nook and cranny of the house, the garage behind it, and the very spacious grounds which were completely encircled on three sides by a very long wooden fence. The fence was virtually hidden by all the bushes that grew along it. The front and back of the property were almost obscured by a dense thicket of bushes and trees. In fact there were trees everywhere, and this is why the place was called, “Woodlawn.”

            Outside behind the back porch was a large two room garage, which at some point in the past had been a stable or coach house. Each section could park two cars, so in effect this was a four-car garage. The two very large rooms of the garage were not connected so that you had to go outside to go from one to the other. There was a modest workshop beside the garage with a tool shed beside that, and a small stairway leading to a huge attic above the whole thing. Ivy and grapes grew in vines up one wall on the outside. I often snacked on these grapes.

            The front driveway was a circular driveway that led around the very large lawn to the front door and also branched off to run beside the right of the house to the back, where it circled around to the front of the garage. The lawns were spacious and wooded. There was the huge front lawn, another large lawn to the left of the house, another spacious one that completely circled the garage to the left, right, and behind. There were trees everywhere (oaks, elms, maples, and many others), and flower beds everywhere. It seemed that each of the trees had several birdhouses in them and there were bird feeders everywhere too, for my grandmother loved birds. A wide variety of different birds made their homes at Woodlawn and I spent many hours looking at them with my grandmother.

The Stone Fences

            I have digressed slightly in this story because I believe that a description of this house and the property helps describe the many happy hours of my childhood spent there. I slept in every room at one time or another and never tired of exploring every inch of the property. As a child, I used to sit and watch all the many birds that made their homes here.

            There was many a time when I visited my grandparents, that my grandmother would take me out alone for a drive into the country to go bird-watching. She taught me how to seek out all the different birds and how to recognize them and their calls. Only my grandmother and I were on these trips. Also on these trips, there was many a time that she would pull the car off to the side of the road and point out a stone fence to me, because for the rest of her life she loved stone fences, due to her meeting her brother Ed in the hospital and what he said to her. She would just stop the car, turn off the engine, and sit quietly. “Look, George,” she’d say to me, “Isn’t that stone fence lovely?”

            Of course I’d agree. This event occurred so often that in my innocent young mind, I thought that the whole world was infested with stone fences, which of course it isn’t. Because I was so young, I knew nothing of what my grandmother was thinking during these moments, since it would have been pointless for her to explain her thoughts to me. I would have never understood.

            But to her, stone fences were not barriers in the usual sense of what a fence is. Rather, they represent markers on the road of life. They are cool resting places. Each stone that has been lifted to make the fence is very heavy, but it is not a boulder. It is a stone, which although quite heavy, could nevertheless be lifted. Every stone was lifted not by any machine, but by human hands and through human toil and sweat. It took great determination, resolve, and inner strength as well as physical strength to lift each stone and place it where it now lay as part of the fence. For each stone that was lifted, there was that much more land cleared to grow food to feed us. These fences were places where we could sit and rest. In time, shrubbery tends to grow around such a fence and it is here that many birds come for shelter. Everything ties together, and to my grandmother, a stone fence represented the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. But I was told none of this of course. These were just quiet thoughtful moments of profound peace and beauty in my childhood.

The Lesson

            After my grandmother died in 1961, I long since forgot about those moments as I continued with my schooling. After I moved away to university, my parents also moved and all of these memories receded into the distant past in my mind. My father died in 1988 and three years later in 1991, I was talking to my mother when the subject of my grandmother came up. My mother asked me if I knew about the story of my grandmother, her brother Ed, and the stone fences. I did not, and it was only now, 30 years after my grandmother had died, that I was told this story.

            The relationship between my mother and my grandmother was a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship, but they were always very close. They had known each other since my mother and father were eight years old. Many is the time during my visits to my grandparents, that I would see my mother and grandmother privately talking over in the corner of either the family room or the drawing room. They had numerous never-ending conversations and it was during one of these that my mother was told this story. My grandmother told very few people this story. I don’t think she ever told my grandfather or her children, including my father, but such was her relationship with my mother that this story was related to her. And I was eventually told it 30 years after my grandmother’s death.

            As I was hearing this story, all of these long forgotten memories of my grandmother came flooding back to me. Suddenly, I thought of that long ago photograph of her that was on my dresser when I was a boy. I have searched high and low for that photograph. I cannot find it, but it really does not matter, because I gazed at it for so long for so many years, that every detail of it is firmly etched in my memory, even though I had not thought of it for about 30 years.

            Like a bolt out of the blue, it all became clear to me. Yes there was a message in it for me, and all these years later I finally got the message. For in the photograph, my grandmother is standing beside a stone fence.

            The message is that no matter how unfair life may appear to be (and it is unfair), no matter how bleak things may appear to be, no matter how black it might seem, no matter how hopeless some things can become, no matter how heavy is the burden we may unfairly be required to carry, it is always possible to lift just one more stone. That is what we must do: just lift one more stone. We may have to lift another one too, and another, and another. No matter, just lift one more stone. But we are also required to be joyful in doing this. It is not a burden, but a requirement of life.
            Somehow, I don’t think I’ve yet heard the last word from my grandmother.

            In 1950, after her heart attack, she arranged for a memorial plaque to be hung in memory of her brother, Ed, in Chalmers United Church in Chatham, Ontario which was the church the family had always attended. On the plaque is an inscription that applied to Ed, but I feel it also applies to my grandmother:

“Great in Mind, Joyful in Spirit, in All Things Faithful”

My Field Has Trees

by Mary I. Lloyd, 1889-1961

My field is bathed in Autumn sun.

It gently slopes to shimmering woods

And lies encircled with a thousand stones

Where pioneer men have toiled and stood.

While o’er the stones, vines twist and creep:

Blue grape, wild rose and bitter-sweet.

It’s quiet here; the grass is green

To rest upon; the water’s clear,

So stilly pass with scarce a sound

That all is peace; there is no fear

Of darkening valley far below,

Where breezes murmur, faint and low.

The goodly earth a promise gives

Of flowers listening for the Spring,

While overhead the blue jays call,

And yellow warblers flit and sing.

White clouds drift idly, pure and bright,
Cool shadows follow, dim and light.

My field has trees to shade the sheep,

Their branches yield both rod and stave

For shepherd hands to guide the flocks,

Where with their lambs they safely graze.

Here, sweet content and peace I find, –
This is the sanctuary of my mind.

Bibliography

Barnard, Lt.-Col. W. T. The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada. Don Mills: Ontario Publishing Co. 1960.

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______. Where the Hell Are the Guns?. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 1997.

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______. Personal Letters and Poems. Cobourg: 1940-1958.

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______. Yearbook. Saskatoon: 1912.

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The Chatham Daily News: Sept. 11, 1938.

The Chatham Daily News: May 22, 1950.

The Cobourg Sentinel-Star: Oct. 9, 1964.

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The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix: July 11, 1935.

The Star Weekly, The Toronto Daily Star: Oct. 17, 1959.