When I gave my widowed grandfather a pillow printed with my late grandmother’s smiling face, he wept with joy. Six months later, I found it buried in the trash, and stained with coffee grounds and tomato sauce. But that wasn’t even the worst discovery I made that day.
After Grandma Rose passed, something broke inside Grandpa Bill that never quite healed.
I’d visit him at his little cottage, and every single night, I’d watch him clutch her framed photograph to his chest as he drifted off to sleep.
The sight of it made my heart ache every time.
So I did something about it.
I took her favorite photo (the one where she’s laughing at some joke Dad told at a barbecue, her eyes crinkled with pure joy) and had it printed on a soft, cream-colored pillow.
The kind you could actually hold.
When I mailed it to Grandpa, he called me within an hour of receiving it.
“Sharon? Oh, sweetheart.” His voice was thick with tears.
“This is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever done for me.
When I hold this, it’s like having Rose back in my arms again.”
I cried right along with him. “I wanted you to feel close to her, Grandpa.”
“I’m going to sleep with this every night.
Every single night for the rest of my life.”
He’s 84, sharp as a tack, but his body isn’t what it used to be.
After he took a nasty fall in his kitchen last spring, Dad and my stepmom, Cynthia, insisted he move in with them.
They had a guest room, they said. It made sense.
Six months passed.
I called Grandpa every Sunday, and he always sounded fine. Tired, maybe.
But fine.
Then my firm wrapped up a major project two weeks ahead of schedule, and suddenly I had the entire week of Thanksgiving off.
I decided to surprise everyone and drove to Dad’s a week early.
I still had my old house key from high school, so I let myself in through the side door.
The house was silent.
“Grandpa?”
No answer.
Then I heard it. A faint murmur of voices.
A television, maybe.
Coming from downstairs.
From the basement.
I followed the sound, my footsteps quiet on the hardwood. The basement door was slightly ajar, and when I pushed it open, a wave of cold, damp air hit me in the face.
And there he was.
My Grandpa Bill, sitting on a narrow metal-framed cot wedged between a rusted water heater and stacks of boxes labeled “CHRISTMAS” and “OLD LINENS.” A tiny portable TV sat on an upturned milk crate.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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