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My Grandfather's Letters #1091646 added June 30, 2025 at 11:15pm
Restrictions: None
1969 (Week Two)
John ran a hand through his hair, eyes scanning the same pages over and over, hoping a line would shift, a truth would blink into place. But the answers weren’t there. Not yet.
He sighed sharply and slammed his palm onto the side table next to him, rattling the old lamp, an ashtray, and a small ceramic horse Vera must have collected sometime in the '70s. Everything toppled. The letters he’d so carefully arranged slid off in a fan of aged pages and brittle creases, scattering across the attic floor.
“Damn it,” he muttered, dropping to his knees.
He began scooping up the letters; some familiar by their folds, others by their delicate loops of handwriting. Then his fingers brushed something different: a page tucked inside a thinner envelope, sealed once with a now flattened wax mark.
It was from Paul.
John sat back against a dusty trunk, heartbeat picking up. He opened the letter gently, as though the weight of his breath might tear it. Inside, in the unmistakable hand of his grandfather, was a note.
April 12, 1969
Somewhere I cannot name
My Vera,
The rains came again last night angry, wild. I huddled near the corner of the cell where it drips the least. It’s a strange comfort, listening to storms. In a way, they remind me of us: loud, unpredictable, but always cleansing.
Ever since the new commander took over the camp, things have shifted. Not all at once. It started with small silences. The guards stopped speaking, even to each other. They move differently now quicker, colder. Tanh, the young one who gave me that stub of a pencil weeks ago, won’t meet my eyes anymore. I don’t know if he’s afraid or ashamed. Maybe both.
At first, they took away our chalk and slates. No more lessons. I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. After a few weeks, the new commander called me into the yard. I thought it was the end many of us have thought that, watching others disappear in the night. But instead, he demanded that I continue teaching. Not the prisoners, but his soldiers.
Now I stand in front of young men with rifles and frightened eyes, repeating the same words over and over. Table. Window. Sky. They write them down in crooked letters while I wonder what they’ll use them for.
I teach them because I must. Because survival is a quiet, bending thing. Because every day I do this is a day closer to you.
The others my fellow prisoners are fewer. The bunks are emptier. I’ve heard screams at night that twist the air, and whispers before dawn that sound like prayers or confessions. I don’t ask questions anymore. No one does.
But I hold tight to your letters. To the garden of your memory.
Last night, I tried to find sleep by thinking of something brighter; somewhere we could be instead of here. I imagined the sea. A quiet place below the noise. So, I wrote you a poem. Silly maybe. But it helped me feel close to you again.
Prompt ▼ 3. Octopuss's Garden ~ Lead vocalist: Ringo
Album: Abbey Road, 1969
In a Garden of Light and Quiet
I’d like to be where the world forgets,
The roar of war, the weight of debts.
To drift beneath the sunlit tide,
And have you sleeping by my side.
No boots, no guns, no shouted names,
Just jellyfish and ocean games.
A garden under waves so wide,
Where no one has to run or hide.
We’d build a bed of coral bloom,
And let the sea erase the gloom.
I’d paint you shells in softest hues,
And comb the stars into your shoes.
I’d kiss the salt right off your skin,
And listen as the dolphin’s grin.
We’d speak in sighs, not broken cries,
And trade the dark for ocean skies.
You’d laugh again, that fearless sound,
The one that shakes the water’s ground.
And I’d forget the days I bled,
Remember only love, instead.
So, if you dream and drift tonight,
Let’s meet beneath the reef’s soft light.
My heart is there, in waves uncharted,
An octopus’s garden, where it all got started.
If I could take you there now, I would.
Until then, I close my eyes and hope the tide of love carries this to you.
With all my love,
Paul
John stared at the letter and the poem that felt like it had time traveled just to meet him now. The ache in his chest was sharp, not just for Paul and Vera, but for everything unsaid between people who never expect to be ripped apart.
September 28, 1969
Dear Paul,
Guess what? You’re officially an uncle!
I’ve written you so many letters now; some mailed, some tucked in the back of drawers, but this one feels different.
Maybe it’s because Julia had her baby last week.
A healthy baby girl; Paula Hope Johnson. Yes, Paula; your sister says it was the only name that felt right. She wanted to honor you without being obvious, and somehow it fits. She’s beautiful, Paul. Dark hair, and the Lennon eyes too. Big and thoughtful, like she’s already wondering what kind of world she’s arrived in.
Julia married Timothy in June. Just a small backyard wedding at your parents’ house. The kind where the grass is freshly cut and the chairs are mismatched, and somehow that makes it perfect. Julia wore your mom’s old lace gloves. Can you believe that? The sunlight caught them just right when she said “I do,” and for a moment it made her look like someone out of one of those magazines you used to send home. Your parents cried. We all did. But behind the joy, there was an empty chair in the front row.
Your chair.
We didn’t speak of it, but everyone saw it. Felt it. I imagined you there in your rumpled dress shirt, half-buttoned, hair a little too long. You’d have whispered something that made Julia laugh too hard, while teasing Timothy and sneaking cake before it was served.
You were missed, Paul.
You are missed.
Still no word. Not the kind that matters, anyway. I’ve tried everything; calls, letters, even cornering some poor young officer last week until he politely repeated the same thing I’ve heard for months:
“No further information at this time.”
But I keep asking. I’ll keep asking until someone gives me an answer that sounds like you're coming home.
Some nights, I close my eyes and imagine us beneath the waves; just you and me. Far from all this noise and waiting. A quiet place, like you always used to talk about. Someplace like an Octopus’s garden as in the Beatles song. A little world of our own, where no one’s fighting, and everything softens. You’d be singing some silly made-up song and tapping a spoon on a seashell, and I’d just float nearby, listening, laughing.
I guess it sounds childish, but it helps.
We had so many dreams, didn’t we? Of building something quiet and colorful together. Maybe a little strange. Definitely ours. I haven’t let go of that. I won’t let go of that.
You once told me that love wasn’t just a feeling it was a choice, made over and over again. So this is me choosing you. Every day. Every moment.
So come back, Paul.
Come back to your garden.
I love you. I always will.
And I’ll wait as long as it takes.
Yours forever,
Vera
John turned the letter over in his hands, the creases soft and worn like the edges of a seashell. The date at the top: September 28, 1969. It felt impossibly far away and yet suddenly immediate. As if by unfolding it, he’d unlatched a door to that exact moment in time.
He read slowly, almost reverently.
The whimsy in Vera’s words took him by surprise. He was so used to remembering his grandmother as sharp, efficient, always organized; the woman who could transcribe court proceedings faster than most people could speak. But here she was, painting pictures of underwater gardens and sea drifted dreams. Imagining his grandfather tapping a spoon on a seashell, singing made-up songs with salt in his hair.
It made something tighten in John’s chest.
He saw how she was holding it together, how she layered lightheartedness over heartache like sea glass on top of cracked stone. There was a raw, aching beauty in it; a way of loving someone so deeply that even the most fantastical images became survival tools.
The line that undid him was simple:
“Come back to your garden.”
It wasn’t just metaphor. It was invitation. A plea stitched with memory and meaning. John could picture her sitting at the kitchen table with a lukewarm cup of tea beside her, writing this with quiet hands and louder hope.
And suddenly, the idea of his grandparents as anything but extraordinary felt absurd. They had dreamed in oceans while the world burned. They had kept love alive through scraps of paper, through ink and daydreams and aching silences.
John rubbed the edge of his jaw, his thumb catching on a faded smudge of ink near Vera’s signature. Maybe a tear, maybe just time. He wasn’t sure anymore.
He sat back and looked around the attic, dust motes dancing lazily through the sunlight. And in that quiet moment, he realized: he hadn’t just inherited their name, or their furniture, or even their stories.
He’d inherited their hope.
The next letter was waiting.
Word Count: 1581 |
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