When Grandmothers Will Woke a Fathers Memory
My father remembered me only when he learned of Grandmothers inheritance.
My life was never smooth sailing, but the real blow wasnt growing up without parents. It was the reappearance of the man I once called Dadafter fifteen years of silence. He didnt come with flowers or apologies. He came with a demand: Share the inheritance.
My parents divorced when I was four. My mother drowned herself in drink, the courts stripped her of custody, and my father, too weak to be a proper parent, left me with his mother in a quiet village near York. He lived in the city and visited rarelyonce every six months, if that.
I went to the village school, learned to tend the garden, sew on an old Singer, fish in the brook, bundle lavender, and make jam. Life with Grandmother was simple but real. In Year 3, my father arrived with a strange woman. I was sent outside. When I returned, only Grandmother remained, sitting in her armchair, her eyes hollow.
Wheres Dad? I asked.
He wont be coming back, Elspeth, she whispered.
And he didnt. He built a new family, forgetting his daughter. Grandmother and I lived alone. I didnt weepI had her. Wise, stern, gentle. She was everything to me: mother, father, friend.
When I finished Year 9, Aunt Mabel, the village seamstress, told me, Youve got magic in your fingers. Enroll in technical collegedont waste your gift in the fields.
I listened. I left for Manchester. I studied, worked, scraped by. My father lived three bus stops from my student flatbut in four years, he never once asked after me. I didnt either.
After graduation, I rented a workshop, married Tom. We had a tiny flat, but every Friday, we drove to Grandmothers cottage. She adored Tom. She glowed when she learned I was pregnant. But she never met her great-grandson
When Grandmother died, the world emptied. Then came the solicitor: the cottage, the land, the savingsall left to me. I sobbed over that letter. Not for the money, but for the love behind it.
My father didnt come to the funeral. Not a call, not a word. He learned of her death six months later. And the will. Then, for the first time in fifteen years, he knocked on my door.
I didnt recognise the aged man at first. He didnt mince words: Grandmothers estate should be split. Half belongs to me.
I laughed in his face. Bitterly, loudly:
To you? Half? You abandoned usboth of us. And now you remember? The scent of pounds?
He growled, but Tom stepped beside me: Leave. Willingly, or Ill help you.
My father took it to court. But even the law sided with me. He lost, paid the fees, vanished again.
Tom and I opened our tailoring shop. We stitched workwearfor labourers, doctors, firefighters. Orders poured in. We lived, we built our life.
I never saw my father again. And I dont want to. Grandmother was my true family. I held on because she once believed I deserved better. And I live to make her proud. Somewhere beyond the clouds
