He didn’t say much, my grandad. He didn’t need to. What he didn’t say was communicated through the small gestures and mannerisms that he’d collected and nurtured as his own over the years. Small winks behind my grandma’s back and jostling snorts that landed him in trouble were a familiar accompaniment to my childhood. The well-meaning, albeit somewhat hesitant and self-conscious pats on the hand, were a fond reminder that he cared. Clumsily, but heartily.

He wasn’t mute, by any means, especially after he broke into his secret whiskey stash. Grandma never did find out his spot, but I knew. He kept his bottle in the small compartment under the grandfather clock. Grandma had always known it to be jammed. Grandad had always known it to have a key. I liked sharing the secret, and not just for the knowing wink that I was awarded.

What my grandad had always been sure of was that the value of words outsold any other currency, if treated properly. They weren’t something to be thrown away in fits of anger, tossed carelessly away to make room for one more glass, they were worth so much more than that. They must be treated with the utmost care. It made all the difference, of that he was sure.

Words were not to be wasted. Nor were they to lie. Words demanded the very best of us all. To record our lives in their agonisingly ordinary states, or to create fictional worlds that proved an eternal escape. He lived by this logic, pondering over syllables to which he would construct particular words, which eventually would form long-awaited sentences. For some, my grandad was too pedantic. They’d usher the conversation along before the sentence arrived in its fully formed state. Leaving half-formed thoughts idle in his head. Those people often fell away, but the sentences would be written in the small leather notebook he carried in his right pocket. As if to grant the words the importance he knew they deserved. It was in his nature to think like this, that’s what grandma said. It hadn’t done him wrong yet, that’s what grandad said.

I suppose that’s where my love for writing rooted itself. Back in my grandparents lounge, at five years old sat wide-eyed at the foot of his favourite armchair as he read stories of witches, enchanted forests, or sometimes the ones about a small boy and his beloved bear. Grandad never rushed these storytimes, not like mum – desperate to for me to nod off so she herself could go to bed, but instead taking his time and instilling pauses where they’d never been.

He would look up from time to time and make sure I was still paying attention. I don’t think he ever worried that I wasn’t, but it became part of the routine and the familiarity was calming. I filled these pauses with fervent nodding as to insist he continue without disrupting the silence Grandad, Winnie and I had created.

Those days with Grandad in the lounge were the best days.

When he passed away, I lost my love for words for a time. Misplaced it, perhaps. Either way, they seemed to taunt me in his absence. As though they had never truly been my friend, but only his. Adjectives would jut out on the pages and suffocate every conversation I attempted to participate in. They aimlessly prodded at me, reminding me that without his care they were simply gross over-exaggeration that fell short of any worthwhile point.

For that time, I shut words away completely. Several months passed by until they provided me with the comfort they once had. I was sat back in that lounge, still on the floor, not daring to assume the chair that I knew could never be mine. The half-full whiskey bottle was sat between my legs and I turned the pages of those familiar books. Those same stories of Christopher Robin and Winnie returned to accompany me through, what thus far has been, the worst thing I could imagine. I put the bottle back into the cabinet under the grandfather clock and slipped the key into my purse. The sun reflected off the glass of the clock to offer me the wink I knew was due.