The fire crackled gently, casting flickers of gold across the worn oak floor. Rain tapped at the windows in soft rhythms, like nature had slowed down for a while.
I sat across from Grandpa Tom, legs tucked beneath me on the carpet, a steaming mug warming my hands.
We hadn’t spoken in a while. Just… existed together. That was always easy with him.
How to describe Grandpa Tom?
He was old. How old? Hard to tell. If you picked a number at random, he was probably a little older than that. His body was frail, stooped, and weary, but his eyes—his eyes still burned with the fire of youth.
I looked at the photo on the mantelpiece.
A black-and-white image of a woman laughing, mid-spin. Barefoot. Alive.
My grandmother, Rosie.
“How old were you, Grandpa?” I spoke carefully, not wanting to upset him. “How old were you when you met her?”
I need not have been afraid, for the twinkle in his deep blue eyes returned, and a faraway look drifted across his wrinkled face.
“I was nineteen,” he said contentedly.
“And how did you know she was the one?” I continued.
His smile broadened, but a small tear welled in his sea-blue eyes.
“She made me feel like I was truly living,” he spoke slowly, as if the memory was a candle he was trying to keep lit for as long as possible.
“I wish I could’ve met her,” I said, almost to myself.
“I wish you had too,” he replied softly.
I hesitated, then asked, “Will you tell me about her? I don’t mean just the stories Mum tells. I mean… what she was really like. To you.”
He leaned back in his chair and let out a long, thoughtful breath.
Then he began.
Summer, 1954.
The air was thick with sun and jazz.
Tom was nineteen, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves rolled, a cigarette dangling from his lips—more for effect than habit. He stood by the edge of the lake, a guitar slung lazily over his back, trying to look indifferent.
Trying not to stare.
She was sitting a few metres away on the jetty. Barefoot. A paperback balanced on her knees, her chocolate hair twisted into a careless knot that danced in the wind.
Her red dress, bright as a poppy, billowed gently around her legs.
“You’re staring,” she said, without lifting her eyes from the book.
Tom blinked. “Am I?”
She raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You want something, music boy?”
A pause. Then a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Only your name.”
She shut the book with a snap, stood up, and walked toward him, her footsteps a whisper on the wood. When she stopped in front of him she grinned, her eyes searching his like she was reading a book of her own.
“Rosie,” she declared, her voice dancing with amusement.
Tom didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Her name echoed through him like the first chord of a favourite song.
They spent that summer like it might vanish at any moment.
Days melted together in a golden haze of sun, grass stains, and jazz records spinning in Rosie’s room. They lay beneath open skies talking about everything and nothing—books, music, dreams, the kind of lives they wanted to lead. Tom had never met anyone who looked at the world like she did.
Rosie saw the world in layers. While others walked past a crumbling wall, she stopped to admire the way the moss painted it green like a brushstroke. She found poetry in the mundane, magic in the overlooked.
She made him feel things.
Not just love. Life.
One evening, just before sunset, they danced barefoot in her kitchen, the sound of music crackling from a dusty old radio.
Rosie wore a red ribbon in her hair, a flash of colour that bounced as she twirled gracefully.
“You’re terrible at this,” Rosie laughed as Tom stepped on her toes for the fifth time.
“In my defence, you’re very distracting,” he laughed.
She shook her head, but her smile softened, her gaze holding his like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Then he said it.
“I will love you in every life I live, Rosie.”
She kissed him then, slow and certain, as if sealing a vow neither of them yet understood.
Years passed.
They built a life together—messy and beautiful and full of music.
In 1958, they welcomed a daughter. A tiny thing with Rosie’s eyes and Tom’s laugh. They named her Marianne.
There were sleepless nights and burnt dinners and bills they barely scraped together to pay. But there was love in every corner of their little house. Rosie turned the mundane into magic, even in motherhood. She sang lullabies that made Tom cry quietly in the hallway.
“She’ll be strong,” Rosie once said, brushing Marianne’s tiny hand with her thumb. “She’ll be curious, and kind, and full of wonder.”
She was.
Spring, 1982.
That was the year they found it.
At the appointment, she wore her red scarf—the one she always claimed made her feel strong.
“If I’m going to be told something awful,” she had said with a small smile, “I might as well wear a little fire around my neck.”
The diagnosis came quietly, without ceremony. Words like aggressive and terminal hung in the sterile air like thunderclouds. Tom’s ears rang as the doctor spoke, but Rosie just nodded, like she already knew.
In the car, Tom gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened.
Rosie reached across the seat and took his hand.
“Don’t mourn me before I’m gone,” she said gently. “I’m still here. Right now. With you.”
She was still Rosie.
She wore her red scarf the last time they went to the lake. Her hands trembled when she took off her shoes, but she still stepped into the water, teeth chattering, a triumphant grin on her face.
“I want to remember what it felt like to be free,” she said.
Tom stood beside her, holding her hand, and tried not to cry.
But Rosie noticed. She always noticed.
That night, they lay under the stars again, her head on his chest, his arms wrapped around her like they could keep her tethered to the earth.
“I’m not scared of death,” she murmured. “I’m scared of being forgotten.”
Tom held her tighter.
“I’ll carry you in everything I do,” he promised. “Every song. Every story. Every heartbeat.”
Winter, 1982.
The sun rose gently, as if afraid to disturb her.
Tom was by her side, holding her hand. Her breath was shallow, her body still, but her face—her face looked peaceful. Almost smiling.
He whispered to her through the morning stillness, a thousand memories folded into one final moment.
“Thank you,” he said. “For loving me. For making me more than I ever was. For Marianne”
She looked at him, just once more, and in her eyes was every summer, every laugh, every moment they’d ever shared.
“I will love you,” she mouthed silently, “in every life I live.”
Then her eyes closed.
He stayed with her for hours. Not saying a word. Just watching her face—peaceful, like she was dreaming of dancing barefoot again, of lakes and laughter and jazz.
And the world didn’t end.
But it changed.
Present Day.
Grandpa Tom wiped his eyes with a trembling hand, his voice quieter now.
“She gave me your mother, Liam. And your mother gave me you.”
I stared at him, an ache in my chest.
“How did you go on?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he said hoarsely. “Not at first. For a long time, I just… survived. But eventually, I realised something.”
He looked at me, his expression impossibly tender.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?”
I let the words settle inside me. Heavy. Beautiful. True.
“She never left me,” he said. “She was in the way I made tea for two, long after she was gone. In the lullabies I sang to your mother. In every story I told you at bedtime. Love doesn’t end. It changes shape.”
We sat in silence then. But it wasn’t stormy. It wasn’t heavy.
It was warm. Full.
“I want to live a life full of colour,” I said after a long time. “Like she did.”
Grandpa Tom’s eyes flicked to the old photo above the fire—Rosie mid-spin, her face alight with joy.
“She’d say start with red,” he said, smiling gently. “Always red.”
That evening, as I left Grandpa Tom’s house, golden leaves drifted across the pavement, dancing in the wind like they had somewhere to be.
I looked up. The sky was streaked with soft hues, like the world was painting something just for her.
And I realised—she wasn’t gone.
Not really.
She was in the stories.
In the stillness.
In the love that had outlived her.
She was in Grandpa Tom.
And now—she was in me.
The Written Mirror 
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