Even after so many years, you could feel my Grandfather in this cottage by the sea and like many before me, I found the book lying on the leather chair and the bookmark still there on the page where the book was closed. It was said that the book could never be read until the reader took a last breath. I knew at some point I would have to open the book and remove the bookmark revealing my life’s story. I remembered that Grandfather told me I could only read the past and the blank pages were the unwritten stories I had yet to live. The future was waiting for me to fill the boundless pages and chronicle my life until the next inheritor would open the book and the process starts again.
The cottage was full of memories of my childhood, the smell of leather chairs, leather-bound books, and there on the easel was the painting of the old man and his dog. It still waited to be completed, the unfinished painting was a burden to both my Grandfather and my Dad. Perhaps it was never meant to be finished. I held his brush in my hand and I could feel the desire of the brush to touch the painting, to finish its purpose of being complete. Walking into his study I could smell his sandalwood cologne, the sweetness of his pipe tobacco, and his bourbon shelf still full.
He had so many first edition books, and he loved the many stories of Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, and Henry David Thoreau. Later in life, he found the southern writers, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, and Eudora Welty. I sat behind his desk and opened the books wrapped in paper holding even more books and original art, but the surprise came in the form, not of first editions but the original manuscripts.
I closed my eyes and awakened to the stories of the early 1900s. I could still smell the paper holding scents of cigars, expensive perfumes, and words written by people no longer with us, yet maybe their spirit sits with me in Grandfather’s study.
Perhaps I will stay here a while, walking my dog along the shore and maybe I will finish Grandfather’s painting. He left many letters for me to answer, yet across the room sits the open book, bound in leather, and within its empty pages the stories will be told.
Part One:
