they don't make grandparents like this anymore

What my grandfather tried to teach me:

How to read the clouds
How to be open-minded, humble, yourself, and loved by everyone
How to play with matches (although not with fire)

How to make coffee
How to tie somebody up so they can't get on their feet
How to comfort the grievers when you're dying

Everybody loved my grandfather. He had a natural, sincere charm, was great at telling funny stories and loved life. He listened with focused interest to what people were saying. Towards the end of his life, he rarely complained even when he was in pain, preferred to make little jokes instead.

I only knew him after he had already retired from his active working life, which had consisted of a little farm with a few fields, a few cows and a plowing horse. My uncle took over the farm and my grandfather and grandmother moved to the little suburb where my family lived, bought a little flat with a little garden in a rowhouse.

I'm sure they missed the village where they had lived their entire life, missed the neighbours they knew so well and the endless fields and the closeness to nature. It must have been an enormous change, having mostly nothing to do after working from dawn to dusk since they were very young. I could tell, by the wistful tone in grandfather's voice when he told the funny little stories about village life or spoke about how he loved the open horizons he saw when standing in the middle of his fields.

But I never saw either grandfather or grandmother bitter or complaining. My grandmother, quieter than he was, focused on feeding and spoiling her grandchildren, on tending to her garden and her handicrafts, and on the English course she took in order to understand the letters she received from relatives in Canada. Grandfather took to exploring his new surroundings, getting to know all the neighbours and helping my father with various carpentry projects. He watched TV documentaries and read biographies as well as tried to think up practical little inventions to solve everyday little problems. He also drew miniature portraits and landscapes (mostly copied from pictures in magazines) on the back of recycled pieces of carton.

They lived simply and sparingly, with a  contentedness  that I have not seen since their generation passed away.

And we, the grandchildren, were always welcomed with open arms. When I was little and my parents were going away for an evening, I took my dog and went to my grandparents, where I played little games with grandfather and was fed sweets by grandmother. When I was in my teens, I used to mow their little lawn, hoover their flat or tune their TV set, and I knew that my reward would be coffee with muffins or cinnamon buns, enjoyed on the patio if the weather was good. When I moved to another city I sent them postcards frequently (often with miniature drawings of my own, to my grandfather's delight), and during my brief weekend visits, my grandmother took great care in packing a goodie bag for my train ride back.

Grandfather was well into his nineties when he died, grandmother a few years younger. My mother took care of them and their household for years when they were too old to look after themselves. But eventually, grandfather spent long periods being in bad shape in hospitals and grandmother needed around-the-clock supervision because of her worsening dementia.

One of the last times I visited my grandfather in hospital, he was dying and barely able to speak or move. I hung back and let my mother do the talking - I felt paralyzed by helplessness and grief and just wanted to run away from that room. Grandfather noticed. He managed to lift a hand to wave me closer, then whispered to me in short breaths - a funny little story again, just to make me laugh. Even on his deathbed, his only thought was to comfort me.

Eventually he died, "being old and full of days". Grandmother, in her quiet way, followed him less than a year later. I still miss them.