When I was a kid, I never really knew my grandfather Carl.

Not only was he an ocean away, living in his home country while I grew up in America,

he had died a few years before I was born, mixing any chance of a meet-up.

Grandma kept his house and things locked away for a long while,

until she too finally kicked the bucket about six years ago.

We managed to get a little money that they had set up. kick the bucket about six years ago.

Me managed to get a little money that they had set aside, but more important than that was

all the old stuff collected over the years.

You see, Grandpa was a fighter through and through.

He'd spent a good portion of his adult life as a soldier in both the World War I and

two fighting for Germany, collecting a few medals to his name.

My mom told me he never liked to talk about it though.

Said he always had this vacant, depressed look in his eyes, even when she was a little girl.

There was more than one time she would get up in the middle of the night for a cup

of water, only to see him sprawled on the living room couch, a bottle in one hand, and a weeping

face cradled by the other. I could only imagine what he went through.

Until now.

Like millions of other people in the current circumstances, I found myself stuck at home

without a whole lot to do, waiting for college to reopen and life to get back on track.

With so many people comparing the current pandemic to past ones, the Spanish flu getting name dropped the most. It got me wondering how my grandfather dealt

with it. So I went up into the attic to go through some of his old things for some kind of

clue, not really expecting to find anything.

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