short Memoir for English

One of the assignments in my last english class was to write a short personal memoir. Now, originally, I read the directions wrong and created my own character to write a memoir about (which I will post), but at the request of my teacher I wrote one about myself.

My great grandfather died when I was sixteen years old. He was ninety eight. I didn’t really know him too well; what I knew of him was mostly from stories my mother or my grandfather told me, or from the few times we sat down and talked over tea. I do know that he was a brilliant man, that he was funny and adventurous, that he designed parachutes for the British Royal Air Force during World War two, and that he liked his earl grey with a bit of lemon. I also know that he was a fantastic artist. My family says that I got my artistic abilities from him, and I couldn’t be more honored by such a wonderful man.
Art is my life. I see paintings everywhere. When I look at clouds, I often think of what brush I could use and what colors I could mix and what technique I would need to achieve the same affect. I have a large collection of art supplies that I keep meticulously organized, and drawers brimming over with old sketchbooks. I am a Fine Art major now, but I remember what it was like to visit my grandparents and look up on the wall at the framed drawings by my great grandpa Arthur. I used to wonder how he saw things like he did. I used to wonder how those frail old hands could carve out such precise movement of the figure like they did. And when I saw some of his architectural drawings from his old jobs, I would pour over them for hours, trying to figure out how he managed to draw his lines so damned straight. When I was about six, I had a wooden toy box that used to belong to my mom that had a koala painted on its side that I adored. In the bottom right corner in delicate cursive it read ‘Arthur, ‘69’. I loved art, and had an eye for it, but I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of a career then- it wasn’t something I honestly saw myself doing. Really, I didn’t decide that art was what I wanted to do until after Grandpa Arthur had passed away.
When Grandpa Arthur passed away, he was at my great grandparent’s home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Apparently he had woken up and dressed himself, brewed himself a cup of tea, and went into the garden to watch the birds. He fell asleep in his chair, and the rest is silence. I remember getting the phone call from my grandma. I was horribly upset, but I remember thinking, ‘hold on, I barely know this man’. But in truth, I really did- all of the raucous stories my family told, my mom’s frequent proclamations the he was the smartest man she had ever met, and even our quiet, polite talks over tea and biscuits. But really, I knew him best through his paintings and drawings. An artist can tell you about another artist simply by looking at their work. An artist can tell you if the person is courageous or shy, funny or dramatic, weak or strong, simply by looking at a picture- and I had spent so much time analyzing the art that my grandfather did that I knew him on an entirely different level than I had realized.
Before he died, when my parents spied me doodling in a sketch book and said ‘So like Arthur’, I sort of shrugged and moved on, but after, I realized how much I adored art and how much he had helped me see it. Very often, when I give my parents or my grandparents a painting or even a sketch, they say, ‘Your grandpa Arthur would be so proud’ and it’s the greatest compliment in the world to me. If I can be half as artistically talented as he was I would consider myself a very accomplished person. But I always think of him, everyday, because everyday, I think of art, and through art, I think of him.


Voila.