Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #71-

It was at the end of Summer and Grandpop and I were in the gardening shed in his backyard.

The shed was full of well maintained gardening tools and terracotta planters and a collection of garden gnomes sitting on shelves and under the potting table.

Sitting in the center of the table top was a lantern and for a second I thought it had already by lit because it was shining, just a little.

Grandpop saw me eyeing the lantern and out of nowhere he tells me that he leaves a lantern hanging from a tree in the front yard so that Nan could find her way back from the Spirit world on the anniversary of her death and that he hopes after he is gone I will do the same.

He promised her that one small thing and if you made a promise to Nan you had better keep it.

I said I wasn’t on board with that because Grandma was all teeth and yelling and her eyes- wow, when she was mad they burned.

” I don’t know Grandpop, she was a handful when she was alive. How am I supposed to manage her now that she’s dead and in a bad mood to boot? I mean, Grandpops, I love you and most of the time I loved her but it took a sniper and a Priest to take her down.”

Grandpop reached for the lantern on the table and he put his other hand on my shoulder, patted it and took it away. ” Truer words about your Nan were never spoken , and that’s why I hang the lantern in other people’s yards.”