JUST CHECKING ON ME

This must have happened to me when I was 11 I think.
My grandfather passed away when I was six. I can’t remember much about him except that when my brother's and I were little, he would always manage to have chocolates that he would give us and tell us not to let mum and dad know.
Anyway he passed away at the house where he and my Nan lived. We would visit her almost every school holiday; I have a treasure trove of great memories there.
My younger brother and I would sometime stay in the living room and watch movies late into the night.

This one night I fell asleep while all the adults were chatting in the dinning area (when my mum and her family get together, they can talk until the cows come home). Any who, I woke up and noticed that the adults must have gone to bed, it was dark and quiet. I rolled over and caught sight of a man standing in the dinning room doorway, he stood with his right hand on his hip and his left was holding his jacket slung over his shoulder. I looked up again when I realized it was too late for anyone to be up, but he was gone. I went back to sleep.

A week later we were home and I came across my brother and mum talking about Nan and Grandfather’s place. My brother was telling mum that a few times he has woken up there to the sound of pots and things banging in the kitchen, when he got up into the hallway he could smell porridge cooking, but when he opened the kitchen door, no one was up and the kitchen was empty.

Mum told us that when she was a little girl, grandfather would always make porridge in the mornings and the smell would wake up all the kids. She told us we shouldn’t be freaked out. It’s just his way of showing us he is still around.

I told her about the man I saw, before I could explain the way he way standing she jumped up, stood in the pose I saw him and asked if it was like that. This kind of confirmed for me that it was grandfather. She said before going to bed, he would check on her and her siblings, looking in their rooms from the doorway.

After my Nan passed away I haven’t really gone back to that old house. I think that maybe he waited there until she was ready to go with him.

Thank you for reading my story.