Today island music is blaring from the medium sized speaker hanging in the corner of the coffee shop. It is making my heart-ache for the Bajan sun, beach and hospitality and a conversation with my grandfather.

I am not sure why Barbados reminds me of my grandfather. There is NOTHING tangible that tie these two entities together.

Not music, not beaches, not the sun – nothing. I remember once going to the beach with my grandfather, he wore beige swimming trunks and demonstrated his ability to float in Lake Huron – as a nine year-old it was spectacular!

My grandfather, in my mind, was really a hobby farmer. He made money off his crops and had a drive-shed full of countless combines, but he always struck me more of a collector of things than an actual farmer.

Today sitting drinking coffee and reading about US politics I spot an older gentleman sitting at one of the tables on a church pew.

He has a zillion pieces of paper sprawled out in front of him and he is madly scribbling away. Once he finishes scribbling on one sheet, he folds it neatly and moves on to the next.

I am sitting here trying to imagine what is on the pieces of paper and what is he scribbling about?

And maybe this is why I am missing my grandfather at this particular moment.

My older gentleman has his pants pulled up at the back so he almost has a weggie with the front of his pants neatly tucked under his round belly. Its not a floppy fold-over belly, just a taught round belly that if you poked it, your finger would bounce back instead of pushing deeper into squishy flesh.

He is wearing a yellow dress shirt with only the top button undone. It looks as though it’s been worn well and washed many times before. Perhaps his favourite shirt.

Who knows, but besides being 5 inches shorter than my grandfather, he reminds me of him and I desperately want to go and talk to him.

I am that creep in the corner watching him intently deciding whether or not to initiate a conversation. What would we talk about?

The fluctuating stock market? Speculation? Sustainability of green energy? Precious metal prices? His soya-bean crop (he probably doesn’t have one!)? His collection of stuff? Or maybe a project he’s been working on for the last decade but can’t seem to finish?

I am pretty confident that whatever the conversation, he’d find something to say to make me laugh and challenge his or my viewpoint on life.

Today I miss my grandfather, and his soya-beans, his fascination with the Model-T Ford, the cobwebs and flies collecting in the window sills on the second floor, the old white bedspread dotted with small-tight tufts of thread, the honey tins, the disintegrating books in the attic, the leather bound ledgers with debts and payments, the old red wagon, the mulberry bush beside the barn, seeing mice scatter when you open the old pig-pen door, the silver dollar bushes (are they bushes or plants!?!), tomato sandwich’s with cheese, boiling milk-weed and other miscellaneous plants to eat, shopping at the K and quizzing him on food prices, visiting auction barns together and conversation about life.

What do you miss about a close someone?