1965 (Week One) - InkSpot.Com

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My Grandfather's Letters

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#1091296 added June 23, 2025 at 1:57pm
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1965 (Week One)

The light through the attic window had shifted, casting long golden fingers across the floorboards. John barely noticed. Time had slowed, collapsed, as he followed the letters like breadcrumbs through a forest of memory.

He was halfway through the next bundle when he found it tucked between two innocuous letters postmarked August 1964 and October 1965. There was no date on this one. No envelope. Just folded parchment, worn along the creases as if it had been opened and closed a hundred times, maybe more.

His grandfather’s handwriting was messier than usual. Less deliberate. Less sure.

John’s fingers trembled as he unfolded the letter.

Prompt ▼

Vera

I don’t know how to begin this one.

I sat down five times to write and tore up the paper each time. You’d laugh if you saw how many false starts I’ve got balled up beside me. But maybe that’s what this is: a false start I’m trying to turn into something real.

I’ve always tried to be strong for you. For us. But the truth is lately, I feel like I’m unraveling and I don’t know who to tell.

I used to think I had it figured out. Life, I mean. If I loved you enough, wrote enough songs, worked enough hours...if I smiled in all the right places, no one would see the cracks.

But I don’t sleep much anymore. And when I do, I wake up feeling like I’m drowning in something I can’t name. Everything feels heavier than it should like I’m stuck watching the world from behind glass, and I can’t reach it. Not even you.

I don't say any of this to scare you. God, that's the last thing I want. But I don’t know how to pretend anymore. I’m tired of pretending. I’m tired of the silence in my head when I’m supposed to hear music.

So here it is, as plain as I can say it: I need help.

Not the kind you give when someone forgets their umbrella or burns the toast. The deep kind. The kind that pulls you out of yourself when you’re too far gone to climb back alone.

I know men aren’t supposed to say things like this. We’re supposed to “be strong,” whatever that means. But I think real strength is admitting when you’re not okay.

So I’m asking you. Not as the girl I fell in love with, but as the one person in this world who knows me better than I know myself: Don’t give up on me. Not yet.

I’m not sure where this letter will go or if I’ll ever send it. But writing it feels like the first real breath I’ve taken in weeks.

Yours, even if I’m still finding my way back to that,
Paul

John stared at the page, his heart pounding.

He had never heard anyone talk about his grandfather like this. Not his father. Not even Vera. To the world, Paul Lennon had always been the calm, collected one the rock. But here, in ink and agony, was a man quietly unraveling.

John exhaled, folding the letter with slow reverence. He realized now why it had never been sent. Or maybe it had and someone had hidden it away, too painful to explain, too honest for a world that never asked the deeper questions.

Suddenly, he noticed something scribbled faintly on the back of the letter. A note in Vera’s handwriting shaky, but unmistakably hers:

You asked for help. And I came.

You didn’t lose yourself, you found your way back through love.

Below that was a heart, drawn carefully, then traced over again and again in fading pen.

John pressed the letter to his chest. For a moment, he didn’t think about legacy or rumors or whether the family really was related to that Lennon.

All he thought was:

They had secrets.

They had struggles.

They had each other.

And in the quiet attic above the noise of the world, he finally understood the kind of love worth writing down.

Word Count: 677

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