Between places

What does reading between places do to me?
It ... speaks to me of my own nostalgia
I wonder now about his father and also my grandfather who just died this year
Almost alone. With bed sores. His ring finger broken by a thief looking for the ring
He only wore the ring to remember my mum
What of him do i carry in me if at all
I shudder because he was type cast villain all my life
But now
In my mother's remembrances... he emerges slightly different
And should we thus only romanticize the errant one
What about the woman who gives of her life to her family
Who is and has always been around for them to be exasperated with?
What justice do i serve if i seek out the story of one and not the other?
I have no memories of this grandfather save one.
Him speaking to me on the eve of my wedding -him sitting on a short wall somewhere me standing shyly before him not knowing him save that he was my mum's father..  him giving me a handwritten prayer on airmail paper... the prayer he had taught my mother.. the note that by some miracle i never lost though i lose things so easily.. that turned up about a year before my longed for baby was conceived... i said that prayer the whole year before she was borm and sayit to this day.. just two of the 5 stanzas.. and in that one small handwritten gift he has been with me..

And he leaves me wondering... what life is it when no one feels like mourning when you are gone... well not no one because my mother mourned him.. and maybe her youngest sister...

Someone so old so weak so frail...

Miserly perhaps?

What are stories i have of him?

He squandered my grandmother's wealth. He couldn't stand up to his father and sisters. Gave them everything. Poured sambar on her head once.

Kicked her like a dog before his sons forever cutting off that young boy's love...

How to sympathise with someone like this.
And yet
And yet
This is only one story yes... i have not lived it seen it..
So now he lies at 80 plus years alone alone... amd i have the one letter and a host of unanswered questions