A Beacon of Dignity

In working through the layers of my liberation, I've written many songs, poems, and prose pieces, relating to the aboriginal
side of my lineage. Today, I want to write about one of my Portuguese ancestors, I also spring from...namely...my maternal
grandfather. His name was John [English translation] Da Silva, and he came to what was then British Guiana, from Madeira,
an island off the coast of Portugal, in the nineteenth century, when he was sixteen years old. Perhaps, I was somehow able
to survive tough times, after arriving in Canada at the age of twenty, from my grandfather having taken the immigrant's plunge into the unknown, at an even earlier age...leaving all that had shaped and comforted him...behind. All I know of his
Madeira days, was that he played the coronet, in a millitary band, until his dominant arm was badly broken, resulting in him
no longer being able to play his instrument, and propelling him across the sea, with one arm slightly shorter than the other,
for the rest of his life. It is said that he worked at a relative's grocery store shortly after he came to British Guiana, and as
unaccustomed as he was in Madeira, to seeing anyone darker than himself, reached for a shot gun, the first time a "dark"
person came into his store. Apparently the cavalry this day was his flustered relative, shouting from some distance, "Don't do that John...don't do that!", and rushing to take the gun from him. When I knew him as a child, he was in his eighties, and he
was often seen moving softly in his rocking chair, on the verandah of his two storied home. Inside of a small nearby zinc
roofed and sided factory, I remember looking wide eyed , at the huge wheels of black iron machines, no longer turning and
the extremely wide belts that had once turned them...which on a river where axe, cutlass, and shovel, were usually the main tools used... filled me with wonder. These turned out to be relics from his long past days of making flour from such local
products as plantains, and even placing ads in the capital city's newspaper, with pictures of healthy looking babies, to extoll
the virtues of his hard won products, I remember, when we visited him, walking respectfully to his verandah perch, and
bending down to kiss his hand, while saying "Bless me Grandpa" in Portuguese, to which he would reply, "Bless you!".
I was told that he always took a glass of red wine, and no more, with his central meals, and this may well have contributed,
to him having long health, a head full of white hair, and his own teeth, into his eighties. He was a man of few words, but as
I reflect on his life, I see him as a "beacon of dignity", in my life, with a powerfful presence...the kind of person that made
you feel...it was a privilige...to ask his blessing. Quester.