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My Grandfather's Letters

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#1091748 added June 30, 2025 at 11:18pm
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1971 (Week Two)

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March 14, 1971

My Vera,

Two of us, riding nowhere, spending someone’s hard-earned pay.

Funny how that line sticks in my head these days, even while I’m bouncing along in the company van with a box of vacuums rattling in the back. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade this nowhere ride for anything, not as long as it ends with you.

It’s been a year, Vera. A year since I stepped off that plane, scared out of my mind, wondering if you’d still see me the same way. Wondering if I could ever see myself the same way. There’s been a lot of doctors' offices, a lot of tests, and a lot of quiet nights when I couldn’t quite find the words to tell you what was running circles in my head. I’m sorry for those nights. I’m trying, Vera. Every day. And it’s you who makes it worth trying.

Because now, we’re here. And we’re expecting a little Lennon of our own. Just writing that makes my hands shake in the best way. You’re going to be a mother, Vera. We’re going to have a family, a noisy, messy, love soaked family that will know what it means to fight for the ones you love, and to come home to them.

I know the vacuum job isn’t glamorous, and it keeps me away some nights while I drive back from some small town with a half-empty gas tank and a head full of your laughter. But it’s a job, and it’s something I can do to help us get ahead, to make sure you and the baby have everything you need.

When I get back from this next route, let’s do something special. Maybe just a walk by the river, or a drive with the windows down, singing off-key to whatever Beatles song comes on the radio. We don’t need much, Vera. We never have. Just two of us, building a life that’s ours, even if it looks different from the one we first dreamed up on those long walks when we were young.

I still love you more than I have words for. I still look for your eyes first in a crowded room, still fall asleep easier when your hand finds mine in the dark.

We’ve come a long way, you and I. And we’ve still got miles to go.

Hold on for me, love. I’ll be home soon.

Always yours,
Paul

John held the letter for a long moment before unfolding it, the paper soft with age, the ink slightly faded but still strong.

As he read, the attic around him seemed to fade. It was just Paul’s words, Vera’s name, and the quiet thump of his own heart in his ears.

He could picture it so clearly now Paul, back from war, still haunted, still hurting, trying to piece himself together in a world that had moved on without him. Driving a van full of vacuums down back roads, windows cracked, Beatles songs humming through the static. Vera waiting by the window, a hand on her stomach, hoping each day that the man she loved would come back to her a little more whole.

It struck John how ordinary it all was, and how miraculous that ordinariness felt. A letter about a job selling vacuums, about hospital visits, about a baby on the way. About wanting to take a walk by the river. Small things. Everyday things.

And yet, everything.

It was hope in its purest form, written in Paul’s careful hand. Not loud declarations, but promises made in the quiet, in the everyday, in the trying. It was love that had weathered war, distance, and fear and still chose to believe in the future, in the family they were building.

John realized that for all the struggles he’d seen in his own parents’ marriage, for all the cynicism he’d carried about what love could be, his grandparents had left him something priceless: a legacy of fighting for joy, even in the smallest moments.

They weren’t perfect. They weren’t legends. They were real. And maybe that was the most important part.

John gently folded the letter and placed it on top of the stack with the others. He looked around the attic, seeing the dusty lamp in the corner, the old boxes of records, the rocking chair that had once been his grandmother’s.

For the first time, it didn’t feel like clutter.

It felt like the echoes of a life lived bravely.

A life that had made his possible.

He took a deep breath, letting the warmth of that truth settle into him. Then he reached for the next letter, ready to keep going ready to discover how the story of Paul and Vera, in all its ordinary resilience, might guide him in finding out what kind of man he wanted to be next.

March 28, 1971

My Paul,

I read your letter three times before I could set it down. Even then, I carried your words with me all day folding laundry, taking shorthand in court, stirring the soup on the stove feeling your love wrapped around me like a blanket.

I can hear your voice in the way you wrote about the “vacuum van,” about Beatles songs on the radio, about how we’ve come so far and still have miles to go. You always did have a way of making even the hardest days feel like they had a light at the end.

Paul, I want you to know how proud I am of you. I see how hard you’re trying, even on the days when you’re quiet, even when your hands shake or your eyes go far away. You are here. With me. And that is enough. More than enough.

I’ve been keeping busy, you know me. Court has been steady, and I’ve picked up a few extra hours here and there to help put a little aside for when the baby arrives. Your parents have been over every Sunday, fussing and bringing casseroles we don’t need, and your mother insists on knitting blankets even though we have more than we could ever use. Julia drops by with Paula, letting her toddle around the living room, and I catch myself imagining you there, scooping her up and making her giggle the way you do.

I know the road back hasn’t been easy, love. I know the tests, the hospitals, the nightmares that sometimes wake you in the night. But you’re here, Paul. We’re here. And we will take every step together, no matter how slow, no matter how long it takes.

When you get back from your route, let’s go down to the river. We’ll bring a blanket, and maybe a sandwich or two, and let the spring breeze remind us of how far we’ve come. We don’t need much, like you said. Just us, and the quiet, and the promise of tomorrow.

I love you, Paul Lennon. In every way there is to love a person, I love you.

And I cannot wait for this next adventure, for this child we will raise together, for the life we will keep building side by side, hand in hand, just the two of us, carrying everything we’ve learned, and everything we’re still learning, together.

Come home soon, love.

Always yours,
Vera

John held Vera’s letter carefully, feeling the softness of the paper worn thin at the folds from time and handling, as if someone maybe even Paul had read it over and over, just to feel close to her.

There was something so normal and beautiful in her words: the casseroles, the baby blankets, the hope wrapped in quiet everyday details. It felt like a promise that life could be good, even after darkness. That love could hold steady, even after war.

But as he set the letter down, a heaviness settled in John’s chest.

Because somewhere along the line, it had changed.

Something had broken been his father, Winston and Paul. John could see it in the way Dad would go quiet when Grandpa’s name came up, the way he would sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose, like trying to stop a headache that had lived there for years.

How had this these tender words, this steady, brave love turned into cold, tense dinners, and long silences on holidays?

John raked a hand through his hair, glancing around the attic. Everything here told him who Paul and Vera had been, but not why the warmth in these letters had turned into the distance that John had grown up around.

Had it started with Paul’s nightmares? With the weight of things he didn’t talk about, couldn’t let go of, even after coming home? Had Winston, just a boy then, grown up in the shadow of a father who was physically there but sometimes gone in spirit, caught between two worlds?

Or had it been Winston, always chasing truth as a reporter, clashing with a father who wanted the past buried deep enough that the war couldn’t reach him anymore?

John didn’t know. But he needed to find out.

He looked back at Vera’s letter, her hope for a simple picnic by the river, her promise of loving Paul through anything, her excitement for the child they were bringing into the world his father.

Winston had grown up with parents who had loved each other deeply, who had fought for their future, who had wanted him yet somewhere, the warmth had turned to distance.

John pressed a thumb to the edge of the page, steadying himself.

He needed to know why.

For himself. For his father. For the Lennon family legacy that was more than just dusty letters in an attic.

Taking a deep breath, John reached into the box for the next letter, hoping the answers would be there, somewhere between the lines of the lives they had lived before he ever drew his first breath.

Word Count: 1669

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