When the Wind Remembers

The wind in our town has a sound of its own — soft, whispering, like it carries old memories through the trees.

When I was a child, my grandfather used to tell me, “The wind remembers what we forget.”

I laughed every time. I didn’t understand how air could remember anything.

Now I’m older, and he’s gone. But sometimes, when the wind moves through the house at night, I swear I hear his voice again — low and steady, like he’s still telling stories by the window.

My grandfather, Arif, was a man of quiet strength. He didn’t speak much, but everything he did felt like a lesson.

Every morning at sunrise, he’d sit on the porch with a cup of tea and say, “Start the day before it starts you.”

He never missed a morning — not even in winter, when frost bit at his fingers and the whole world seemed to sleep.

When I was small, I’d sit beside him, half-asleep, while he told me stories of his youth — how he built this house with his own hands, how he met my grandmother at a train station during a storm, how he promised her he’d never leave this land, no matter what.

After she passed away, that promise became his anchor.

He refused to move, even when his children begged him to come live in the city.

“This is home,” he’d say. “The wind knows me here.”

The last time I saw him was two days before he died.

He looked smaller, like time itself had been taking tiny pieces of him each day. But his eyes — clear and blue as summer sky — still carried that spark.

He took my hand, smiled faintly, and said, “When the wind moves through this house, don’t close the windows. Let it in.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I nodded anyway.

After his funeral, I stayed in the house alone.

It was too quiet, like the air itself had gone still. Dust floated in the golden afternoon light, the floorboards creaked softly, and the smell of his tea still lingered in the kitchen.

That night, the window in his old room opened by itself.

The wind slipped in — slow, gentle, familiar.

It brushed against the curtains and made the chime by the door sing the tune he used to hum.

I froze. For a moment, I almost said his name aloud.

Then I remembered what he’d told me.

Don’t close the windows.

The next morning, I found his journal beneath the bed — bound in cracked leather, the pages thin and yellowed.

Inside were fragments of his days — sketches of the garden, short notes about the weather, recipes he never finished.

And then, one entry stopped me cold.

“If the wind comes through the house when I’m gone, it means she’s calling me again. But if it stays quiet — maybe she’s waiting for me to send her a story first.”

He was still writing to my grandmother.

Still keeping his promise.

I closed the book and whispered into the empty room, “She must be happy, Grandpa. The wind hasn’t stopped since you left.”

Each day after that, I felt the house breathe again.

The curtains moved like sighs. The chime sang softly in the mornings. Even the floorboards seemed to groan with a kind of life.

Sometimes, when I made tea, steam curled the same slow way he used to watch it.

I started writing in his journal too — letters to him, to her, to the wind.

It became my way of talking to them both.

One dawn, months later, I sat on the porch — his chair still there, his cup beside mine.

The sun rose gold and warm, and the wind swept gently through the fields.

For the first time, I didn’t feel sad.

I closed my eyes, and I swear I could hear them both laughing — light and far away, but real.

It hit me then — the wind wasn’t just air. It was memory.

It carried pieces of people we love, their laughter, their warmth, their words.

That was how the world remembered them — not in photographs, not in stones, but in movement and sound.

That morning, I whispered, “I’ll keep the windows open.”

The wind answered — not in words, but in touch. It wrapped around my shoulders, warm as sunlight, before moving on.

Now I live far from that old house. The city winds are different — louder, restless — but I still leave my windows open.

Every now and then, when a soft breeze slips inside, I stop what I’m doing and listen.

Sometimes it’s just noise. But sometimes, I hear him again — that same low hum, that same rhythm of calm.

And I remember what he told me long ago:

The wind remembers what we forget.