Hi everyone,

This post is in response to a writing prompt about visiting Grampa's house. I'd love to hear your reflections.

                                                                    Not Grampa’s house

It was never Grampa’s house, not even when he was alive. It was always Granma’s. It was her money; her inheritance.

The only recollection I have is a photo in a silver frame on the mantle shelf above the fireplace. And his armchair, a stuffed horsehair monstrosity that took up a whole corner of the sitting room. The chair and the man are connected by the photo of him staring into the middle distance through round frameless spectacles. There’s an air of arrogant remoteness as he sits in the very same chair, his hands resting across his stomach.

What is he seeing? What thoughts are clamouring for his attention? Granma says that he was a quiet man who demanded silence at the dinner table and not to be bothered with domestic problems. After dinner he returned to his chair in time to listen to the evening news.

Granma always refers to him as ‘Daddy Darling’ as if he’s just popped out for a newspaper. Widowed in her forties, she never remarried. History relates that she was heard from time to time discussing some little issue with Daddy as she stirred the jam or chopped vegetables for the soup.

The household continued to operate just as it did after his death aged fifty-nine; the designated spinster daughter remained with her mother.

The photo remained till the end of her days looking across at her as she darned or knitted in the evenings.

Where is it now, that photo? At the back of some drawer belonging to a great grandchild or other distant relative who doesn’t even remember his name or even who he was.

To me, he will be forever on the mantle shelf.