I’d always known there was an unspoken difference about my grandfather. It was in the way he looked out the window, eyes tracing an expanse far beyond the horizon, like he could see another world out there. Word around the town was that he’d been a hero, that he had done things he’d never talk about. To me, he was just Grandpa: quiet and steady, with shaking hands whenever he stirred his coffee.
Eventually, on a rainy afternoon, my curiosity got the best of me. Unsure of what to expect, I asked him, “Grandpa, why did you go to war?” He didn’t answer. When our eyes finally met, I saw a soft pair of black pearls, carrying a sadness I couldn’t quite understand. Finally, he spoke. His voice was steady, yet accented with an explainable heaviness.
“Young men go to war,” he began. “Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel like they’re supposed to.”
The empty air was now filled by the lingering weight of his words, heavy and unspoken. Grandpa took a long breath, as if he was reaching back through the years, wanting me to see what he’d seen.
“When I went,” he said, his voice softer, like he was talking to himself as much as to me, “I thought I was doing the right thing. They told us we were brave to go, that only cowards stayed behind.” He looked down at his hands, rough and worn, like they still remembered the feel of a rifle. “Somewhere along the way, people started confusing courage with fighting. And they called laying down those arms cowardice.”
I sat there, quiet, feeling the weight of his words settle in. The war wasn’t flags or parades, not like the stories they told in movies. It was something else, a reality bigger and darker, stretching far beyond any battle. Grandpa’s gaze drifted to the window, toward a world he once thought he could protect.
“I lost friends out there,” he said, his voice brittle. “Good men who thought they were doing the right thing. We all did, believing that courage meant going forward, that we were heroes just for being there.” His voice broke, just enough. “But after… when it was over… I started to see that maybe real courage was finding peace, forgiving myself for all the things I couldn’t change.”
I looked at him, feeling my heart race, as if I were holding a fragile memory, a piece of his past he’d hidden away. He looked back at me, eyes soft, filled with an emotion almost like regret.
“It’s easy to tell someone that bravery means fighting,” he said, his voice barely a whisper now. “But sometimes, the bravest thing is to walk away. It’s facing what you’ve done, what you couldn’t stop, and choosing to keep going.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t fully understand. Yet, I felt closer to him than ever, like I was carrying a part of his story now, a burden he kept to himself for years, decades. I considered him not as a soldier with a weapon, but as he was now, sitting across me, facing a world that still held expectations for him to be strong.
The silence settled between us, not empty, but full, filled with all the things he’d never said, all the things he’d carried alone. In that silence, I realized courage wasn’t what I’d thought. Sometimes, it looked like this—a man who had put down his arms but continued on, day by day, his story held quietly in his heart.
Glancing at his rough hands and wrinkled face, it hit me: He was a hero, not just for going, but for coming back, for learning to live with what he’d seen and lost. Sitting there with him, I made a promise to remember, to carry his story not as a badge of pride, but as a legacy to honour.
When he spoke again, it was barely more than a breath. “Don’t let anyone tell you what courage is. Sometimes, it’s doing what everyone else is afraid to do. And sometimes… it’s letting go.”
Photo by Jeffery Jiang
Article by: Andrew Miao