The Trunk

‘I have some pain killers here for you here Mr Daley!’ said the Filipino nurse before she injected morphine into the canula in the back of my grandfather’s right hand.

He nodded at her and muttered the word, ‘thanks!’. As the drugs started to take effect it wasn’t long until he was asleep. I picked up his hand and held it in mine trying to choke back the tears.

Here lay a man whom I was very close to. He was like a second father to me after my own father died in a car crash. My mother couldn’t cope with the loss of her husband, so when I was eight my grief-stricken mother and I moved in with him and nana. He taught me how to fish and always made time for me, no matter how busy he was. I was lucky because I got to see him in his finest years…yet here he was, in a hospital bed receiving palliative care. This man meant the world to me and I loved him more than words could say.

He slept peacefully for two hours, and when he woke, he smiled at me, that old toothless grin in which I got so much reassurance from. He lifted his hand and beckoned me close to him. I, of course, got out of my chair and moved closer to his mouth where he whispered;

‘I don’t have much time left, but when I do go, make sure you look closely in the trunk in the attic!’

I nodded in response and sat back down as he drifted off to sleep once again. When my mother arrived, she woke him from his slumber and indicated that she wanted to spend some quality time together. As I turned the corner from his room, I heard him laugh. It was a laugh I had heard plenty of times before and as I left, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to hear it again. Tears began to drip down my cheeks, my body trembling with the fear of what I was going to do when he passed. Yes, his body was failing him, but his mind was as sharp as a tack.

That night we got the call saying that we needed to come in…he had taken a turn for the worse. My mother and I rushed to the hospital and even though I felt my heart get pulled out and stamped on, we had the privilege of holding his hands as he passed. I held his right, she, his left. He went peacefully with a smile on his face, knowing that he was going to be reunited with the woman of his dreams…. nana.

Over the next few days, I organised his funeral. People came from far and wide to say goodbye to the great Arthur Daley, such an honourable man. I, myself, was shocked at how full the large church was. There were even people standing. It justified in my own mind how great my idol was.

The morning after the funeral, one thing was going through my mind like a broken record; what did he mean when he said to look in the trunk in the attic? Unable to withhold the suspense any longer, I took the stool from the back bedroom to pull the tiny hook that held the Stira attic stairs firmly in place. I took down the folding steps and climbed into the attic. I pushed the light switch that illuminated the large space that was completely floored, where my grandfather, God rest his soul, spent a lot of his time.

I myself hadn’t been up in the attic in months, not since he got sick. I was greeted with a stale smell, the smell of dust. The model railway empire we had built together was situated slap bang in the middle on display. We had painted all the buildings, and laid all of the track. It made me smile just looking at the amazing structure. I ran my right index finger along one of the trains and was ashamed to see the dust that had accumulated.

I looked past the model train set to the corner of the attic under the eaves. There it was, there was the trunk. I rushed over to it, hitting my head on a lightbulb as I went, and knelt down in front of it. I rubbed my hands together in suspense and opened its lid.

I was met with old photographs and papers. I rolled my eyes at the irony that a man so methodical could have no order in this ‘special trunk’. I began the gargantuan task of going through every inch of it, making two bundles as I went; one for photo’s, one for papers. I did this without looking at the photograph’s as I wanted to go through them all together at the end in chronological order.

I began my journey into my grandfathers past with the photographs. There were some with nana, the youthful face of my mother in hers. I was surprised as everyone had always said she looked like nana but I never saw it, until now. There were some of their wedding day, and of pops holding me as a baby, still in the hospital, with tears in his eyes. With mom being their only child, and me their only grandchild, I felt honoured to have the opportunity to look through my pops treasured memories.

Then we came to the papers. Some were love letters that pops and nana wrote to each other when they were dating. There were some of my terrible art work I had produced when I was a toddler, that he obviously liked because they made the trunk. Other than that there was just a big A4 sized manilla folder. I put that aside as I finished looking through the things that my grandfather had obviously cherished.

I put everything back into the large, red, wooden trunk, everything except the envelope. I brought it down the stira with me and opened it at the kitchen table as it looked very important and official. I sat down on the rickety wooden chair at the head of the table and spilled the contents out in front of me. I was shocked at what I found.

Amongst the papers were the deeds to the house…that was no surprise, but a bit of reassurance that my mother and I could call it our own. The surprise was that there were other deeds to properties and land. I needed to use google maps to identify where some of them were, but was astonished that he was able to keep the knowledge they existed to himself until, literally, the day he died.

I found a letter addressed to me in the mix. It read:

My dearest Philip,

If you are reading this it means I have passed to be with your nana. I know you are wondering what the deeds to these properties and land are doing in an envelope in the attic. When nana’s parents died, they left them to us. They had invested their money in property and we inherited it. We were comfortable at the time and didn’t want to sell what we one day knew to be yours!

It was nana’s dying wish to sell one to put you through college, but we were still left with four houses and two substantial plots of land. We hope you and your future family can use them to pay for expensive things like your wedding or your first home.

As you know, we were only blessed with one child, and hope that you can bless this world with more, and then be lucky enough to have a grandchild as perfect as you!

All my love,

Pop XX

As I wiped the tears from my eyes I was touched by the sentiment. My mother walked into the room looking perplexed at my tears. I handed her the letter. She bowed her head and told me that they had offered her property over the years, but the only property she wanted was the one she was living in. I jumped into her arms and cried like a baby into her neck.

‘He’…sob…’called’…sob…’me’…sob…’perfect’…sob…

‘Of course he did son!’ she said stroking my hair. She lifted my head up with her hands and looked me dead in the eye, ‘because you are!’ She kissed my forehead as I cried some more. I looked towards the door and for a brief moment, through the tears in my eyes, thought I saw pop there, he winked at me. I felt a warm, calm run through my body and blinked the tears away. When I looked at the door again, he was gone.

‘Who would have thought how much family means to us…until they’re gone!’ I said to my mother.

‘Oh he knew how much he meant to you!’ mom reassured me, ‘that was blatantly obvious!’

‘It was?’

‘Well what other teenager would be up in the attic constructing a train contraption instead of going out and getting pissed off of their heads?’

‘Me.’

‘And what other grandson would take his holiday leave from work to be able to go and sit with his dying grandfather in hospital twice a day?’

‘Me.’

‘He loved you like a son!’

I began to tear up again, as did my mother and we cried in each other’s arms for what seemed like hours.

‘I loved him so much!’

picture from pixabay