Grandad's Lullaby

The melody was a phantom limb, a familiar ache that surfaced only in the quietest hours. Grandad E’s lullaby. It wasn’t a song I’d ever heard him sing aloud, not really. It was more of a hum, a low, resonant vibration that seemed to emanate from his very bones when he thought no one was listening. A private comfort, I’d always assumed. Now, it was a current pulling me through the murky depths of my grief.

I sat at the dusty piano in the back room of the shop, the one Grandad E had always kept covered with a faded velvet cloth. Grandma S had lifted it the day after the funeral, her movements slow and deliberate, as if unveiling a sacred relic. The keys were yellowed, some chipped, but when my fingers brushed against them, a faint, sweet scent of lemon polish and old wood filled the air. It was the scent of his hands, of his quiet presence.

The notes tumbled out, hesitant at first, then gaining a fragile momentum. It wasn’t a complex melody, just a simple, repeating phrase that spiraled upwards like smoke. But as I played, something shifted. The raw, jagged edges of my sorrow began to soften, not disappear, but morph into something else. A yearning. A recognition.