Grandpa
View(s):On the sunny verandah, Grandpa lays back in his recliner, shakily grasping its wide wooden handles with bony, arthritic fingers, stiff and gnarled with age. He wants to call his granddaughter Nadisha, to help him sit upright, but he cannot speak, since he had had a severe stroke. Now she enters with his afternoon Nestomalt tea.
“Grandpa, don’t slump like that. Let me help you sit-up,” she advices, carefully placing the cup out of reach and adjusting him into an upright posture. “Now,” – she reaches over for his tea, and stirs it with the long handled spoon, which was in it – “let me feed you.” But Grandpa shakes his head vigourously, and refuses to open his mouth. Nadisha sighs, wishing she did not have to do her mother’s job today, since she had gone to a meeting. Grudgingly, she lets Grandpa take the cup.”What else can do, if Grandpa is so stubborn?” She asks herself. When suddenly Grandpa’s cup slips off his trembling hand, splashing the luke warm drink on her face and dress and tumbling onto the floor with a resounding thud.
“Grandpa, look what you have done! Now I’ll have to do a mega clean up! Next time you let me help you!” she cries crossly, frustratedly, snatching up the cup. Storming the room leaving a bewildered old man to figure out what happened for himself. After the cleanup is over and another Nestomalt is prepared, Grandpa still wants to drink on his own, out Nadisha staunchly refuses, holding the cup out of his reach, and slowly feeding him with a spoon.
When her mother finally comes in to relieve her, she heaves a sigh of relief, and goes to get dressed for tuition classes. When she leaves, her mother is still patiently assisting Grandpa. This time she doesn’t say goodbye to him as she usually does. Her inward reasoning supports her. “He’s mute,” it says, but her conscience pricks her, “he is old and lonely.” Still a bit annoyed by the incident, she just goes on. In the evening, before bedtime, her mother calls her to Grandpa’s room. “Perhaps to feed Grandpa his medicine. He is so stubborn,“ she muses to herself. When she reaches the room, her mother hands her the medicine bottle.
“He doesn’t need it,” she says, sighing. “Why? Is he refusing it or what?”
questions Nadisha, puzzled, annoyed.
“No. He… he is… gone,” she sobs, leaving the room.
Nadisha walks over to the bed and takes in her Grandpa’s still form. His glazed eyes seem to glare up at her in hurt rejection. Her knees feel shaky and weak. She falls by his bedside, letting the bitter, remorseful tears flow. It is too late to say goodbye.
Rebecca Angela Fernando
Flash Fiction
A simple tale of youth and old age, love & loss and above all, an all too identifiable sense of regret. The most powerful sentence for me in this whole story is: “Grandpa still wants to drink on his own…”
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