1969 (Week One) - InkSpot.Com

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My Grandfather's Letters

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#1091509 added June 30, 2025 at 11:12pm
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1969 (Week One)

January 28, 1969

My beloved Paul,

I don’t know if this letter will ever reach you.

I don’t even know if you’re somewhere that mail can find. But I need to write to you anyway because if I stop talking to you, even like this, I’m afraid I’ll forget what your voice sounded like.

It’s been a year and a half since you've gone missing. Nearly two whole years.

For so long there was nothing. Just silence. Then they told me finally that you’d been captured. No date. No details. Just that cold, empty phrase: prisoner of war. No promises about when, or how, or even if they were bringing you back.

They marked you “Missing in Action” last fall. I held the notice in my hand and wept in the hallway like a child. That was the same day they handed me your stipend check like it could somehow stand in for your arms around me.

I’ve been sick lately. Nothing too serious, I don’t think mostly stress, exhaustion, maybe too many nights spent not sleeping and wondering what’s happening to you across the ocean. I’m doing my best to stay strong. For you. For us.

Your parents have been kind. I spend most Sundays with them now. Your dad tries to keep his hands busy, fixing things that don’t need fixing. Your mother just sits quietly a lot, clutching that framed photo of you from graduation.

And Julia; oh Paul, you won’t believe this she’s pregnant. Due in the fall. She says it’s a girl and wants to name her Hope. I cried when she told me, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe because it’s been so long since there was something good.

I took a new job. Something with a bit more rhythm to it, something that keeps me from checking the mail ten times a day. It doesn’t pay much, but it helps. I talk to you in my head when I’m walking to and from the bus stop. Sometimes I pretend you're walking beside me, humming whatever silly tune you were stuck on that week.

There’s an emptiness here, Paul. A quiet place beside me that nothing fills. But I carry you with me everywhere. In the songs on the radio, in the way the light hits the window at dusk, in every sleepless hour of the night.

I don’t know how this ends.

But I believe I have to believe that this isn’t the end of our song.

Come home to me.

With all the love in my aching heart,
Vera

John sat on the attic floor, Vera’s letter trembling slightly in his hands. The paper was yellowed; the ink faded in places where the pen had pressed hard like the words had to be forced out through grief.

He read it once.

Then again.

Then just held it.

The letter didn’t scream. It didn’t plead. It didn’t beg for pity. It whispered. It ached. It waited.

He imagined her at the kitchen table hair pulled back, eyes swollen, pen clenched tight between fingers that refused to let hope go completely. He could almost see the cup of untouched tea beside her, steam long gone cold. The silence between sentences said more than the words did.

For the first time, he understood what it meant to miss someone you loved while pretending the world hadn’t ended. How to speak like they were still listening. How to keep breathing for someone who might not be breathing anymore.

The lump in his throat refused to move.

He glanced toward the old lamp in the corner the one Vera had written about, the one she’d sworn was too ugly to live but too stubborn to die. It was still here.

Still standing. Like her.

So much of her life had been spent in this waiting. In love that had no promise of return. She had mourned, and worked, and laughed when she could. She had kept going. And somehow, that broke his heart even more than the silence did.

John wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel and set the letter down carefully beside the others.

His grandparents weren’t just names etched on picture frames or dates carved in headstones. They were stories unfinished ones. Notes left dangling in the air. Letters unsent. Words never spoken aloud.

And somewhere in those letters, in all that waiting and wondering, was a strength he’d never fully appreciated.

John didn’t know what had happened to Paul next not yet. But he knew this:

His grandmother had been a warrior of quiet resilience.

And his grandfather had loved with a kind of fire most people spent lifetimes looking for.

And that was something worth remembering.

Prompt ▼

February something

My Vera,

There's something in the way you move that still brings me peace. Even now. Even here.

I don’t know how long this letter will take to reach you or if it ever will. The guards don’t speak much anymore, not since the new officer took over the camp. He brought silence with him like a shadow. Where once I was asked to teach English, now I’m ordered to keep quiet. The notebooks they gave me were taken. The simple dignity of speaking, of being seen as human, was stripped away in the name of fear.

But this morning, a scrap of paper appeared in my cell. A pencil, worn nearly to the wood, left beside it. No words. Just an offering. I think it was Tanh, the younger guard, the one who doesn’t flinch when he sees my face. Maybe he remembers I’m still a person. Or maybe he has someone, somewhere, and recognizes what I’m trying to hold onto.

So, I’m writing to you. Because I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.

Vera, the others...the men I came in with...they’re disappearing. One by one. At night, I hear things. Screams. Pleas. And then nothing. I don’t know where they’re taken, only that they don’t return.

I tell myself I’ll be the exception. That I’ll find a way out, find a way back to you. But there are nights when I wonder if that’s just hope wearing a brave face.

Still, even here especially here what I carry most is you.

You, walking into that record store with your brother’s old jacket and asking for Please Please Me. You, laughing in your sleep, stealing the covers. You, biting your lip while trying to decide what kind of pie to order, like it was life or death.

I love you, Vera. In ways I still don’t fully have words for. It’s not just the way you laugh or the way you fight when something matters to you. It’s not the sound you make when you sleep pressed against my chest, or how you smell like cinnamon, ink and home.

It’s something in the way you are.

Through the heat and the hunger and the hollow days, I’ve held on to you. Your letters play in my head like songs on repeat. I read them in the dark and pretend your voice is right beside me.

There are days I forget what month it is. Days when the silence presses so hard on my chest I can barely breathe. But when I close my eyes, I see you. I see our apartment. That ugly lamp. Your books stacked sideways on the shelves. I see home.

I want you to know that you were always the best part of my story.

If I come home, I’ll spend every moment proving that the time apart was just the world testing how deep our roots run.

But if I don’t...Vera, promise me you’ll live. Not out of obligation, but out of love. For yourself. For us. Dance barefoot in the living room. Travel. Sing off key with the windows open. Love again, if it feels right.

Tell our story, or don’t. Keep it like a secret tune only you know the melody to.

You were the song I didn’t know I was writing until it had already filled every corner of my life.

And always will.

Forever yours,
Paul

John read the last letter from Paul and froze.

The pencil written words still clung to the paper like echoes, shaky but intentional, each one stained with the weight of a man trying to pass his heart through the eye of a needle. The kind of letter people only write when they believe they might not get another chance.

But that wasn’t what made John’s stomach twist.

It was the tone the finality of it. Paul wasn’t just scared. He was saying goodbye.

That didn’t make sense.

Because Paul had come home.

Hadn’t he?

John blinked hard, like the attic light might be playing tricks on him. He looked around at the dusty shelves, the ancient lamp, the letters still stacked like paper ghosts beside him. The air felt heavier now, as if the attic itself had exhaled something it had been holding onto for too long.

“This doesn’t add up,” John whispered.

He rubbed his hands over his face. His grandfather had taught him how to tie a fishing knot. Had driven him to school the year his dad was too busy with work. He could still hear the man humming Beatles tunes while making breakfast, dancing with his grandmother in the kitchen like they were still twenty.

So, if Paul had never come home...who had?

A chill ran through him, a quiet kind of dread laced with disbelief.

He flipped open the next box, rifling through envelopes, papers, photos anything that might explain what he was reading. His pulse quickened. His breath shallowed.

The edges of the world felt sharper.

There had to be another letter. A return note. A telegram. Something.

Because if Paul hadn’t made it back, if that letter was the last...

Then everything John thought he knew about his family, about his origins, about himself might be built on a story no one ever dared to finish.

And that meant it was up to him now.

To turn the final page.

To find the truth.

No more waiting.

Word Count: 1700

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