This is not the story I set out to write about hope.
As I scoured through the recesses of my memory for times when I’ve been hopeful, hopeless, and every other kind of hope in between, I had no idea what my hope story would be, internally squirming at the thought of writing something personal.
I began to find ‘hope’ everywhere, a bit like when you buy a red car and suddenly all you see are red cars, aka the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
There was the well-intentioned everyday kind: ‘hope you’re ok’; ‘hope you get good weather’; ‘hope I haven’t disturbed you’; ‘hope you don’t mind me asking but…’ well, actually I do, but that’s a different story.
Then there was the more sinister kind: the empty hope of a political speech; the false hope of yet another beauty campaign promising that this moisturiser is the one to ‘change my life!’; and then, of course, the utterly hopeless hope in the incessant bad news headlines.
Just as I thought my hope story was going to take a dark turn, I found countless tales of heart-warming hope, unwavering hope, fighting hope, resilient hope, loving hope, and sacred hope.
It was then that I found my hope story. In a deep-rooted memory from around 1985...
‘Don’t disturb your Grampa,’ said Gigi, shooing me away, ‘he needs his rest now.’
Grampa’s chair was as close to the three-bar fire as he could safely get but only one bar was on. I sidled out the flimsy wooden door as she placed a tartan blanket over his knees. I reached the passageway and turned back peeking through the gap in the door I’d just come through.
Gigi removed Papa’s handkerchief, an off-white rag with his initials hand-stitched in the corner, from his top pocket and dabbed his eye area. Was he crying? I stood stock still at the other side of the door.
As she folded the handkerchief and neatly pushed it back into his pocket, she brushed her hand down the side of his face. His watery eyes looked up at her and a thin tear slid down his papery grey cheek. ‘Come on now,’ she whispered, ‘you are ok.’
She prised his fingers away from his furrowed brow and sat on the arm of his chair. She took his hand and rubbed his thumb with hers. He tried to say something, but no words came out. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know’. He looked at her again and another tear silently fell to his lap.
She removed a comb from the pocket of her flowery apron and ran it gently through his thin white tufts. ‘There you go,’ she said, ‘just as handsome as ever.’ She smiled at him, and his face crumpled, his gnarled fingers back at his brow again.
Gigi stood up, smoothed down her apron, picked up the half-eaten tray of food beside him and took it to the tiny kitchenette that sat off the front room. I couldn’t see her anymore.
Tears stabbed the back of my throat, and I wiped my nose with my cardigan. I left to find my mother unable to fathom or tell her why I was crying.
At the time, I didn’t understand what I had witnessed that day.
It would be some years, maybe even up until today, before I realised that what I thought was a sad story is anything but.
For Papa and Gigi, it’s a story of love.
For me, it’s a story of hope.