Who was my favorite relative?

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I’ve had great and terrible relatives. A few living kin are alienated from myself and / or other family through petty feuds that may never be resolved. That is terribly sad. There are other relatives I love dearly, My Mum being the last living one not in family civil war with me. If I had to choose a favorite of my deceased family, it would be my Dad’s dad, my Grandfather, who, like my Dad, my Great Grandfather and myself, was called Arthur Chappell. Arthur was a brilliant speaker, especially in his vivid recollections of World War Two. He lived his later years in a North Manchester high rise tower block and from there, he would point across the railway yards and City Centre, describing vividly the impact of the Luftwaffe raids on the region. It was so bright from the flames that the blackout became pointless, he would say. He could read newspapers and comics from the bright glow generated by the incendiaries. He was a tearaway in the war years. He often simply roamed the streets in the air raids, until chased by the ARP wardens, until one of them died shoving him into a shop doorway, just before being stuck down by shrapnel himself. It was a moment that haunted my Granddad for the rest of his years. He loved horse racing, and loved to read anything on racing, from form pages in newspapers to the novels of former jockey, Dick Francis. He hardly ever won, but he didn’t bet large amounts of money anyway. He just played for fun. He never understood commercial television. When the ads came on, he assumed the show was over and often went to switch the TV off until everyone told him that it was just a break. He smoked from before he hit his teens, and chain-smoked heavy – up to eighty cigarettes a day. He was in his seventies in the late 1980's when cancer finally took him down. In the hospital, gangrene set into his legs, but he refused to have them amputated. He said that he wanted burying in one box, not chopping down bit by bit. He knew taking his legs was just stalling for time to a death he simply accepted with a martyr’s conviction. I found his stance heroic, and noble. He spared us all the grief of seeing his end dragged out longer. Of all the relatives I’ve lost, his passing struck me the hardest, and his story telling skills inspired my own appreciation of words and language. His legacy lives on in me – I hope he would appreciate where I headed with it. Arthur Chappell