When Grandmothers Will Awoke a Fathers Memory
My father remembered me when he learned of Grandmothers inheritance.
My life was never smooth sailing, but the hardest blow wasnt my parentless childhood. It was the reappearance of the man Id 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 soon drowned in drink, the court 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 attended the village school, learned to tend the garden, sew on an old machine, fish by the river, arrange heather bouquets, and make jam. Life with Grandmother was simple but true. In Year 3, my father arrived with a strange woman. I was sent outside. When I returned, only Grandmother remained, sitting in her armchair with hollow eyes.
Wheres Dad? I asked.
He wont be coming back, Beatrice, she whispered.
And he didnt. He built a new family, forgetting his daughter. Grandmother and I carried on alone. I didnt weepI had her. Wise, stern, and kind. She was everything to me: mother, father, friend.
When I finished secondary school, Aunt Margaret, the village seamstress, told me, Youve a gift with your hands. Enrol in technical collegedont waste your talent in the fields.
I listened. I left for Manchester. Studied, worked, scraped by. My father lived three bus stops from my student flatyet in four years, he never once asked after me. Nor I him.
After graduation, I found a workshop, married Thomas. We had a tiny flat, but every Friday, we travelled to the countryside to see Grandmother. She adored Thomas. She glowed when she learned I was expecting. But she never met her great-grandson
When Grandmother passed, the world emptied. Then came the solicitor: the cottage, the land, the savingsall left to me. I wept 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 hardly recognised the aged man before me. He didnt mince words:
Grandmothers estate must be divided. Half belongs to me.
I laughed in his facesharp, loud.
To you? Half? You abandoned us, both of us. And now you remember? The scent of pounds?
He scowled, but Thomas stepped to my side.
Leave. Willingly, or Ill help you.
My father took it to court. But even the law stood with me. He lost, paid the fees, vanished again.
Thomas and I opened our tailoring shop. We stitched workwearfor labourers, doctors, firemen. Orders poured in. We lived. We built our life.
I never saw my father again. And I dont care to. Grandmother was my true family. I endured because she once believed I deserved better. And I live to make her proud. Somewhere beyond the clouds
