Short Story : Grandpa Who always Runs After The War | @mosin-nagant
The children in the housing estate named him the Robot Grandpa because the way he walked looked stiff like a robot.
We often passed the old man on the way to the school bus stop. Sometimes we also saw him sitting on a park bench because he was tired after running.
"Ssst, look, that's a Robot Grandpa!" whispered George.
When we started to get closer to the grandfather, my friends and I were immediately silent and then laughed again after passing him. However, the old man was never angry even though he knew that the boys liked to tease him behind his back.
Oh yeah, I'm Peter, and I live right across from the Robot Grandpa house. My mother even often set aside food or snacks in our house for him.
My mother also often reminded me not to make fun of him like other children. I nodded, after all, I've never done that.
I once asked my mother why that old man liked to run so much in the morning. My mother didn't have an answer to that question either.
One day, we didn't see Robot Grandpa sitting on the park bench as usual. In the evening, I immediately learned from my mother that the grandfather was sick and that my family would visit him.
While my father and mother were conversing with the grandfather's younger sister who had come all the way from Philadelphia in the room, I was sitting in the living room alone. It was the first time I entered the house.
I just found out that he was a former soldier who had served in World War II. Along the walls are medals of appreciation.
I was amazed, it turns out that grandpa is a war hero. One more thing, on the corner table in the living room of the house there is an old frame containing a photo when he was young, in army uniform with a beautiful woman.
The grandfather died two days later. My friends and I will never see that old man sitting on a park bench as usual.
A few months after his funeral, his younger sister decided to sell the Robot Grandpa house to a government employee. Someday, that government employee will become my father-in-law because I married his daughter, Liliana, when I grew up.
Interestingly, so far my in-laws have never changed anything in the house since the first time his bought that house, for reason, what the owner of the house has done for the country.
When one day I was idly cleaning the frame on the table that I saw the other day when I first visited the house—which is now also my home—I found a folded newspaper containing news of a fire that occurred at 05.43 am in 1945.
The incident killed a woman. Meanwhile, her husband who had just returned from service from the battlefield arrived at the gate of the house to surprise his wife.
That morning, the soldier burst into the flames to save his wife. Unfortunately, it was not a battle he could win.
His wife died while he himself had to lose a leg as a result of the incident. I think I know why the old man walks like a robot, and why he likes to run so early in the morning.
He is not running from reality, but trauma. I knew, he love his wife so much, and had made up her mind to live in that house and chose not to remarry for the rest of his life, but still couldn't accept that it was 5:43 am in her house.
written by me: