Behind the Attic Wall

 Grandfather had always liked his puzzles and riddles. Wordplay, vocabulary games, puns; basically anything that involved toying around with words was his domain. Every evening he would spend half an hour with me so that he could impress upon me the fun and practical applications of being able to utilize the English language to suit my thoughts rather than to struggle with expression.

Unlike stereotypical countryside attics, the only ghosts that prowled around that well maintained room were my grandfather and I. The room was like a chamber of his heart, he had told me. It was where he first came across a book of riddles as a child and where he first tested out a camera as an adult. As I grew older and began displaying a keen interest in photography, grandfather bought me my first camera. He did however, have one condition. Every day he would click one picture that I was not allowed to see. It struck me as an odd request to make, but I went along with it. In the eight years since, my skills have leveled up considerably.

Standing in that room again, it felt like nothing had changed except for his absence. Sure, there were a few days’ worth of cobwebs and some dust, but the sunlight streaming in through the window and the warmth it brought with it felt the same as always. I looked down at the note he had left behind. Mother had given it to me the day we buried him, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it immediately. For as long as I could remember, grandfather had been training me in the art of wordplay, yet his final challenge was the simplest of them all.

“Behind the wall of my heart lies the reason why it has kept on beating for this long.”

The northern wall of the attic was originally made out of wood. When the house was renovated a decade ago, grandfather had insisted on putting up another retractable wooden wall, creating a new compartment in the attic, but no one had really used the space. Or so I thought. Trembling with excitement, I opened up the wall and witnessed the sight beyond.

The old wooden wall had been turned into the biggest picture board I had seen, packed with hundreds of pictures. The subject of most of the pictures was none other than myself. In disbelief, I perused this almost photo-journal like spread. There were pictures of us together that were eight years old, marking the occasion of the camera’s arrival. I made my way from one end to the other end of the wall, finding a picture he took of us playing scrabble in the attic last month. Memories of our time together, his final gift. I noted how strange it was that I didn’t feel tears pricking the back of my eyes, just gratefulness at having such a special space behind the wall of his heart. Behind the attic wall.