'Steady/Steadier/Steadiest' by Sharon Boyle

Granma was old/grey/fusty but her death meant discovering another woman, one admired/sexual/possibly sluttish. I found the letters in her locked dressing-table drawer. They leaked tales of admirers and quicksand dalliances. One suitor, though, wrote wholly of worship and not the usual love/lust/shag mix. George Harrow was a poet and a painter, press-ganged into a world of warfare. His words were thick with emotion; each sign-off a heartfelt embrace.   

But Granma married Joseph Ballard, aka Joe/Dad/Grandpa – a steadfast man with a steady job as a handyman and a steadier outlook. The wedding photo shows her beautiful/hesitant/possibly pregnant, and him grey-dog ordinary.

There’s family talk that from the time the wedding ring clamped round her finger like a jubilee clip, Granma began to dip into unhappiness/decline/decay. Depression followed by dementia meant she was locked inside her own head. Late-stage photos show glassy looks and not-there stares. She’d been dead for years when they placed her in the coffin.

Did she ever regret not choosing George? Regret not marrying someone bright and restless like herself? When did the penny drop that she’d botched her life, and in the time of difficult divorces too?

Perhaps she didn’t have a choice.  Perhaps she thought George’s artistic ambitions too shaky to support her and a baby. Perhaps George was strafed/bombed/POWed during the war. Perhaps he survived and met someone who wasn’t fearful of his rickety prospects. The letters don’t say. They just stop.

I bundle them up and burn them in the brazier and head inside to hug Grandpa Joe whom I love freely/profusely/completely because he is a steadfast man who smothered his hurt/brought up another’s child/was never loved by his wife.