‘He had hands like yours,’ my Grandma tells my husband-to-be one Sunday afternoon. We’ve just popped in to say hello. She’s in a reminiscent mood (when is she ever not?) talking about my Grandad, of course. My Grandad who I’d never met. Of three husbands, he’d been the only one she’d truly loved. She hands us the photo. She watches for our reaction from across the room. We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of time: him, her, the two of them back in time, crossing the road hand in hand towards an unknown future. They couldn’t have foreseen any of it: the five children; the emigration to Canada; his watery death in an unmarked grave. Though he appears far back in time to the two of us, she sees him as though she’s looking through a window, yesterday.
Written for dVerse Prosery Monday, where Kim is hosting. She has given us these lines from D.H. Lawrence to incorporate into our prose:
‘We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time’.
My Grandma had so many stories, married and widowed 3 times and mother of 5 children. She was a displaced person from Latvia after the Second World War, and she came to the UK to train as a nurse. One day I’d like to tell the story of her life. The above is just a snapshot from it.
