| Shifting
Sands
by Ali Hale
Luke sat at his grandmother’s bedside. He tuned out the bustle
of nurses, the sounds of snoring and coughing from other patients.
Grandma was looking even more frail than last week, her formerly
bright blue eyes clouded over. All Luke’s life, she’d
been a slim, elegant, woman but now she looked emaciated, swamped
by her flowery nightdress.
‘Hi, Grandma,’ he said, quietly.
She smiled, her usual warm wide smile. But today, Luke could see
the bravery and pain beneath it, and something caught in his throat.
‘It’s good to see you, my love,’ Grandma said,
and reached out a hand. Luke clasped it gently, afraid of hurting
the thin fingers.
‘I brought this,’ he said, and took the sand-timer from
his rucksack, unpeeled the layers of bubble wrap and tissue. He
stood it on the metal bedside trolley, managing to find a space
amidst the cards.
Grandma turned her head on the pillow, and beamed again. ‘Bless
you – but it’s yours, Gramps wanted you to have it.’
‘I know.’ Luke watched the sand settle into the bottom
chamber. ‘I just … thought you might like a piece of
home.’
The sand-timer appeared in Luke’s earliest memories. It had
stood squarely on a shelf in Grandma’s kitchen, and as a toddler,
he’d sat memorised by the streaming sand as Grandma boiled
him an egg for lunch.
He’d been told the story of the sand-timer so many times,
by so many different family members, that he couldn’t remember
the first time he’d heard it. When Gramps was still alive,
he and Grandma had told it to Luke in tandem.
‘Your Gramps almost became a carpenter, you know. He was that
good at carving, sawing, hammering together bits of wood. He made
tables and bookcases and all sorts.’
‘Good job I went into teaching, though, else I’d never
have met your Grandma.’
They’d exchange smiles at that point, and Luke always felt
privileged, never embarrassed, to witness that moment.
‘It was the first present he gave me, when we started courting.
I always said I’d no time for ornaments or jewellery –
gifts should be useful. So he gave me something both practical and
beautiful.’
‘Just like her,’ Gramps would say, with a wink to Luke.
The sand-timer was never treated as an object of reference. It was
loved, and used carefully – but for everyday tasks; boiling
eggs, timing Boggle rounds, amusing small grandchildren.
Luke’s grandparents were particularly inventive when it came
to the third of these. Grandma often picked him up from school and
took him home, on the days when mum worked late – and he spent
long, happy, weeks at his grandparents’ during the school
holidays.
The sand-timer was the basis of several great games.
‘Luke, my boy, see how many times you can sprint to the hedge
and back before all the sand runs through!’ Gramps said, sitting
in his wicker chair on the patio. Luke dashed up and down the garden,
finishing panting and triumphant.
When he won the four-hundred metres at the end of primary school,
Grandma was at the finish line to give him a huge hug. ‘I’m
so proud of you!’
‘It’s all that practice we did together,’ Gramps
said.
Luke managed to get his breath back enough to laugh. ‘We,
Gramps? You just timed me!’
The next year, Luke felt small and new and lost at secondary school.
He despaired of finding anything for his art homework, sketch a
still life composed from objects in your home.
‘I’ve not got a single idea,’ he said, after skulking
listlessly around the house for half an hour. ‘I can’t
think of anything. And I can’t just draw the fruit bowl, that’s
what everyone does.’
‘How about “Breakfast on the Farm” for the title?’
Grandma took down the sand-timer and a couple of eggs, and a half
a loaf of her own bread, arranging them all on the table for him.
His teacher praised the resulting sketch, holding it up to show
the class that a still life didn’t have to be a bowl of fruit
or a jug.
Grandma also taught Luke something which helped when he was hit
by what Gramps called the ‘teenage blues’.
‘Sit quietly, Luke, watch the sand, and give yourself all
the time you need just to be’
Sometimes the sand-timer needed turning three or four times before
Luke felt better, sometimes just the once. When he was in the worst
temper, he would scowl when Grandma lifted the timer down and held
it out – those times, she knew he didn’t want company.
In Year Nine, when he dreaded going to school because of the bullies,
she just sat with him, one hand on his arm, and they watched the
sand together.
‘Feel like you’ve got your spark back?’ she asked,
as the last grain dropped.
Luke nodded.
‘Wonderful! Because I need someone energetic to help stir
my chocolate chip cookie dough…’
By the time he’d dropped the last cookie onto the tray, and
licked the spoon and bowl, in Grandma’s words, ‘cleaner
than clean,’ Luke had made up his mind to talk to his form
tutor the next morning.
One Christmas, he sketched the sand-timer in careful detail, and
painted it onto canvas for Gramps. It was the first piece he’d
done that he was really proud of; it took hours to mix each shade
exactly right, and he spent two Saturday mornings shopping for the
perfect frame.
‘That’s a right professional piece of work,’ Gramps
said when he unwrapped it, and shook Luke’s hand. His grip
wasn’t so strong as usual, and it struck Luke that his grandparents
were getting older. ‘Thank you very much, my lad.’
Only two months later, they found out about the cancer. The painting
was the last present Luke ever gave to Gramps and, because of that,
Grandma said she would always treasure it as dearly as she treasured
the sand-timer itself.
Luke’s birthday, last summer, had fallen on the Saturday after
A-level results were published, creating a double cause for celebration.
‘Now, this is your main present,’ Grandma said, handing
him an envelope which he knew would contain a cheque. ‘But
I wanted to give you a little something as a keepsake, as it’s
your eighteenth.’
Luke gave her a hug, and a peck on the cheek which made her smile.
‘Thanks, Grandma,’ he said, and glanced at the label.
My dear Luke, May this always bring you happiness and joy. Your
loving Grandma. He unwrapped the bright paper, opened the plain
card box carefully, drew out layer after layer of tissue.
When he saw the sand-timer, he had to blink hard, his eyes stinging.
‘Oh, Grandma. Are you sure you want me to … you’re
sure you want to give …?’
‘Of course’” she said. ‘Gramps always intended
you to have the sand-timer one day, ever since you were knee high
to a grasshopper. You were so fascinated by it when you were little.’
Luke still was. He marvelled again at the workmanship, the painstaking
curves, the beautifully smooth wood, before he looked to his other
presents. His friends and relatives had been more than generous,
but the sand-timer was by far his favourite gift.
It got him through some low points, too – like his second
week at university, slumped listlessly over his desk at midnight,
hopelessly stuck on the essay due in at nine am.
‘Everything I write is crap. They’re going to wonder
how I ever got in…’
Luke was never usually violent, or given to fits of temper, but
his hand reached out for something to hurl across the room. It closed
around the sand-timer.
He stopped, alarmed by his own fury, and unclenched his fingers,
then turned the timer very gently. The sand began to trickle.
Luke just sat, and watched, thinking about nothing, until all the
sand had fallen through.
When he looked back to his computer screen, the essay didn’t
seem so bad. He’d stick in a quote here, juggle around a couple
of paragraphs there, add a linking sentence or two…
He got an A-minus and a ‘Very good effort, excellent first
essay.’
‘I … do miss him …’ Grandma said, her voice
very faint.
Luke blinked, came out of his thoughts, and looked at Grandma. Her
hand was reaching out towards the sand-timer. ‘Gramps?’
he asked.
The tiny movement of her head might have been a nod. ‘Still…’
she said, ‘…soon, I’ll be with him.’
Luke’s stomach lurched as though he’d fallen several
feet. He swallowed. ‘Grandma, don’t say that. I …’
But he had to stop, and scrub the back of his hand over his eyes.
‘Shh,’ she said, softly, then: ‘Turn it for me,
love.’
He reached out and turned the timer over, setting the sand running.
He held her hand as they watched it, and listened to the slow, laboured
wheeze of her breathing.
The ward was silent, the other patients all sleeping, the nurses
tending to duties elsewhere.
‘Grandma,’ Luke began, but her eyes were closed.
As the last of the sand ran through, he heard a very gentle exhalation
– then nothing.
The undertakers put the sand-timer in Grandma’s coffin, at
Luke’s request, between her clasped hands. He shook off his
mother’s concerned looks and asked for a moment alone.
For several minutes he stood there, remembering all the happy times
they had spent together. He was glad that Grandma hadn’t lingered
on in pain, and knew she’d hated being frail and cared-for
… but it wouldn’t be the same without her.
‘Give my love to Gramps,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll
miss you.’
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