Big Fish

We all need something to believe in and someone to believe in us.

Very recently I lost my grandfather, he passed on to I'm not sure what and I miss him something horrible. It's astonishing how you can miss someone so so much.

My grandfather was the leading man in my life.

I went to go and see him a few months before he passed away and we had the most wonderful day. We played chess, I filled him in on my life and we ate soup together while sharing little smiles every now and then and then he laughed lots at himself on photo booth. I loved that man so much, my grandpa and one of the mani he reasons he has such an impact on me is that he unequivocally believed in me, always.

My experience of my Grandpa was not a perfect man, a perfect father or grand father but despite all his faults, He loved me. he was always happy to see me and He saw and believed in the good in me.

This evening I watched Big Fish by Tim Burton. A wonderful film about a father who loves and has always told tall stories about his life, exaggerating the height of a rather tall friend, making a grumpy boss into a ware wolf, using hyperbole to create this perfect town. The world he created through his stories is one of courage and bravery, love that over comes all things, a Big Fish and a gold ring.
His son however has stopped believing his dad, stopped hearing the stories, stopped listening to him and now instead only wants the dull facts. He doesn't believe in his father anymore, to the point where he doesn't just not hear the stories, he hates them. He hates the stories and he hates the man who tells them. He thinks he doesn't know him.

But what he doesn't realised is that, his dad is right there. He is more loved than he realises and if he just stopped to listen to his dad, and really listen, he wouldn't just get the wonder but the facts he searches for in there also.

His dad isn't lying, the son needs to just believe in his dad and the relationship that has become bad, will be restored.

(Spoiler alert)
At the end of the film, there is a beautiful scene where the father no longer able to talk asks the son to tell his death. In this moment the son believes and enters into his fathers world, where facts and fiction become one. He sees all the facts and creates this most beautiful story and send off for his dad. The son believes for the father. The father believes as he always has.

My grandpa believed in me, without question. He believed in me. I'm sure he saw the many ways I'm imperfect, the facts beneath, he watched me grow up but he chose to take them both together, the good and the bad, he believed in the good in me. And I took the same approach with my grandpa, knowing him to be imperfect and yet loving him all the same. Taking the smiles, the kind words, the hugs and seeing him as the loving, more than stubborn or confused at times.

I believed in him for as long as I can remember, always my tall grandpa who gave me squeezing hug which took the air out of your lungs and told me 'he was all the better for seeing me', who took me to the theatre with friends and who had braved jail, the army, the apartheid.

I miss my grandpa so much and it's because together we believed in each other. He will forever be my Big Fish, the one who saw the fact and wonder and took both by the reins.

We all need something to believe in and someone to believe in us. We all need to be seen to the depths and loved to the skies. That is our biggest desire. To be believed in, despite our failures. For someone to say 'you'll get through' when it doesn't seem like you will. My grandpa believed in me and me in him and boy does it hurt when that person goes, you miss it, Him.

My hope is not gone though, although I'm hurting, my hope is not lost. My ultimate has not passed away, but just a very special someone who in my life shone very brightly of something wonderfully more.