Page 139 of Seeking Hope
We finally reach our picnic spot, and Hope and I quickly set about laying out the blanket—arranging the containers of food and bottled drinks. Lily is the first to place her bouquet at her Great-Aunt Amber’s headstone.
When I turn to Willow, she’s already kneeling beside the neighbouring grave, gently brushing away dirt and fallen leaves before carefully setting her flowers down on the headstone of her late grandfather.
In Loving Memory of Troy Harrison Grant.
February 10, 1957 – October 4, 2029.
A gentle, caring and loving father and grandfather.
Forever in our hearts.
He was seventy-two when he passed away in his sleep from a heart attack—four years after rekindling his friendship with Hope’s parents, and four years after he and my mother had finally gone their separate ways.
After we dropped him home that day, following our first visit to Amber’s gravesite, he sat my mother down in the living room and told her he wanted a divorce. He said he no longer had it in him to endure the miserable life they lived for nearly four decades. He told her they both deserved happiness and love, and it was painfully clear they would never find it within the confines of their marriage.
In her usual fashion, my mother yelled and screamed, hurling a million and one insults at my father before finally conceding. She admitted she had always dreamed of travelingthe world and meeting new people—and with her newfound freedom, she was finally able to do just that.
They were officially divorced just over a year later, and while my relationship with my mother has been pretty much non-existent since, my father and I grew closer than we had ever been before. He even spent time helping me at the workshop during the early years of the family business.
As for my mother, according to my brother, Dylan, she’s currently somewhere in Germany, living it up with her ninth—or is it tenth boyfriend? Who knows? No one’s able to keep track these days.
The funeral was both emotional and beautiful. So many people gathered to celebrate the life of Troy Grant. Hope’s family, my father’s friends and former colleagues, and even Jason, his wife Mila, and their four children—Jake, Isla, Jaxon, and Ruby—were all there to pay their respects.
But the biggest surprise came the next morning, when I received a phone call from Skylar, wanting to express her deepest condolences. We spoke for almost an hour, catching up and sharing updates on our lives. I genuinely smiled as she spoke about her three precious boys—Arlo, and her twins Silas and Zephyr, while I told her all about my own three kids.
After that conversation, my heart felt a thousand times lighter—and for the very first time, I felt something I never thought I’d ever receive from her: forgiveness.
It was a bittersweet moment, and I wished my father was still around for me to talk to. Yet I was grateful for the time I had with him, and now, he can finally rest peacefully besidethe woman he had never stopped loving. I owe it all to Hope’s parents, and even to Amber’s widowed husband, for allowing my father to be laid to rest here.
I watch as my wife hands our daughters their plates of sandwiches and fruit first, before making one for herself and me. Even at forty-nine, she remains as beautiful and radiant as the first day I met her. If someone had told me more than fifteen years ago that my life would look like this today, I would have laughed in their face.
But now, as I sit here, surrounded by my beautiful family, their smiles and laughter filling the air and warming my chest, I feel a peace I never imagined possible.
This—this is home. This is love. This is the life I had always dreamed of. And in this moment, I know that every loss, every heartbreak, and every joy led me here, to exactly where I am meant to be.
The End.
