07/06/2026
❤️ A Different Kind of Heart Month Post ❤️
This month at Forward Motion Freedom, we'll be exploring the heart from many perspectives: the physical heart, the emotional heart, the energetic heart, the resilient heart.
Today, I'm sharing something a little different.
Many years ago, I wrote the original version of the story you're about to read. It was published in the local Cooranbong Gazette, and at the time I held a dream that one day it might become a picture book to support people through grief and loss.
That hasn't happened yet, and perhaps it never will.
This week, however, I found myself pulling the story back out, dusting it off, and rewriting it. Polishing it. Breathing life back into it.
What surprised me was how much the process helped me navigate my own emotions.
This year has brought me face-to-face with many aspects of the heart journey. Eight people connected to my life have concluded their earthly journey. Others I care about are facing the possibility that their own journey may be approaching its final chapters. At the same time, I have witnessed remarkable turnarounds, people I have supported experiencing healing, recovery, and outcomes that at one point seemed unlikely.
Life, death, grief, hope, heartbreak, miracles, love, and memory have all been sitting together at the same table.
As many of you know, I also studied writing and hold a Diploma of Professional Writing. Part of my decision to reduce some of my one-on-one consulting work is to create more space to return to published writing, something that has quietly been calling me back for quite some time.
Today I'm listening to that call.Maybe I'm sharing this simply as an act of self-expression.Maybe this story has supported me at a time when I needed it.
Maybe someone else needs it too. I honestly don't know.What I do know is that my heart keeps nudging me to place it here.
So, as part of Heart Focus Month, here is a story about love, loss, memory, family, and the pieces of people that remain stitched into our lives long after they're gone.
●GRANDPA’S BLUE SHIRT●♡
By Julie Lucas-Hokin 2026 copyright.
We all sat around the old oval oak table in the centre of Grandma’s kitchen. Her famous, many times local show baking competition winning fluffy buttermilk scones were still warm when she’d set them down, but none of us had touched them. They sat in the middle of the table, unbuttered, uneaten, and now going cold, and we all knew, scones are best hot.
Cold scones felt wrong, yet they suited the mood. Grandma’s eyes were red and swollen. She reached up with a trembling hand to brush stray grey wisps from her face. Her hair wasn’t pinned up in the usual fashion grandma preferred; no bun, no fringe clipped out of her eyes. She looked softer somehow, smaller.
She let out a long, aching sigh. “You know,” she said, staring at the photograph of Grandpa on the bookcase, “I used to complain about that blue shirt he wore all the time, now I’d wash it every night just to see him wear it again.”
The photo caught the light just right. Grandpa, holding up a massive brown trout, smiling under that old straw hat, and, of course, the shirt, faded, frayed, stuffed with junk, and held together with brown buttons.
“Grandpa really loved that shirt,” I said, touching Grandma’s arm. Her mouth twitched, half smile, half sob, sad.
Grandma’s gaze stayed fixed on the photo. “He’s wearing that shirt in nearly every picture,” she murmured.
I nodded. “Including at my wedding. He said the shirt would bring good luck to my marriage, so had to be worn. I told him it would be my something blue in the something old, something, new, something borrowed, something blue tradition. He added he would qualify as the something old.” That made us all grin despite our sadness.
Grandma huffed out a small laugh. “And I told him if he wore it, I’d cut it up and use it for dusting rags.” For months after the wedding, he was either wearing it, or had it hidden and I don’t think it received a wash in all that time.
That cracked the room open a little. A ripple of laughter moved around the table. The scones remained untouched, but the silence eased.
We never did get around to packing up Grandpa’s things, which had been the purpose of the gathering; to support Grandma in that challenging task. Instead, we sat and remembered, not just who he was, but all the small, stubborn ways he filled a room. And somehow, in every single memory, there was that shirt.
“It started out as a fishing shirt,” Grandma said, voice lighter now. “We had gone to town; I needed new shoes. He hated shopping, especially shoe shopping, so he wandered off to the fishing and camping store, came back with a grin and that awful shirt, said it was half-price and had good pockets.”
“It was a terrible shirt,” Cheryl said. “Mottled blue and quite hideous.”
“And those brown buttons and sleeve pockets,” Dan added.
“He bought it for the pockets,” Grandma said, laughing. “Said it was perfect for fishing gear.”
Eight-year-old Molly piped up from beside me. “I loved Grandpa’s shirt. So many interesting places to hide things.”
“Yeah,” said Larissa, not to be outdone. “He always had lollipops or balloons or something fun in the pockets.”
Michael leaned forward. “That’s where Snowy came from. My birthday, he walked in with that shirt on and the big pocket at the front was all lumpy. Then it moved.”
I remembered the look on Michael’s face when the kitten purred in his hands, pulled from the depths of Grandpa’s shirt.
“Snowy wouldn’t fit in there now,” Hannah said, “She’s massive. Honestly, she could use a diet.”
“Grandpa fed her too many treats,” Michael grinned. “He had a stash of them in one of his pockets every time he visited.”
“He called it his lucky shirt,” Grandma said. “The first time he wore it fishing, he caught two enormous trout and found a $20 dollar note on the track to his favourite fly fishing spot. After that, he wore it all the time.”
“After the garden incident, he refused to wear anything else,” Dan said, smirking.
I laughed before Grandma even started the story. We’d all heard it a dozen times, but it never got old.
“He’d spent the whole day in the veggie patch,” Grandma began, smiling now. “Everything was almost ready for harvest. He was so proud. Biggest crop he’d had in years.”
“He was cranky though,” I added, “because you wouldn’t let him wear the shirt.”
“It was filthy!” Grandma said, mock-offended. “Smelled like fish scales and goats. I’d finally gotten it into the wash.”
“So he wore the green flannelette one,” Cheryl said, grinning. “The one he hated.”
“He said it was too tight, too green, and had no proper pockets,” Grandma chuckled.
The next morning, he dressed in the freshly washed blue shirt, filled the pockets with all sorts of “essential stuff, " and marched out to the garden with his straw hat and a plan. That plan lasted about five minutes.
“We heard the yelling first,” I said.
Larissa’s eyes were wide with glee. “He was chasing the goats with the pitchfork!”
“They’d broken through the fence in Grandpa’s edition of the story,” Grandma said. “Or rather, he left the gate open.”
“Twenty-four hooves,” Dan muttered. “Six goats, and one very angry man.”
I could still picture it, Grandpa stomping in gumboots, the goats leaping like lunatics through what was left of the lettuce, tomatoes, peas and pumpkin. One of them even had the scarecrow’s hat in its mouth.
“He blamed you,” Larissa said to Grandma, giggling. “Said if he’d had the shirt on the day before, none of it would’ve happened.”
“I told him bad luck had nothing to do with shirts,” Grandma said. “And everything to do with unlocked gates, and forgetfulness.
Michael leaned in, eyes bright. “Do you remember when Grandpa taught me to fish?”
“Oh, we remember,” I said. “Especially the part where he fell out of the boat.”
Grandma chuckled. “He didn’t speak to me for a day after that. Said I laughed too hard.”
Me, Grandpa, Larissa and Michael were all in the tinny. The others were picknicking on the shore. It was Michael’s first "in boat" fishing lesson, the camera ready for his first catch. Grandpa had helped him bait the hook, guided the line into the water, and then waited, one hand in a pocket of that blue shirt, fishing for something.
Michael’s voice rose with excitement. “Then something tugged, really hard, and the boat rocked, and I couldn’t hold on!”
Grandpa lunged to help. I stood to take a photo. The boat tipped sharply to the right. Grandpa let out a yell and went straight over the side.
“There were minties everywhere,” said Michael. “And hooks, and Grandpa’s teeth.”
His eyes widened, even now.
“His teeth floated,” I said. “Popped right out of his mouth. He thrashed around trying to find them. Michael was shouting, ‘Your teeth, Grandpa! They’re to the left!’”
We were all laughing now, even Grandma, who wiped her eyes with the edge of her apron.
“And we still caught the fish,” Michael said proudly. “That bream was huge.”
“Grandpa called it a lucky day,” I said. “he reckoned he stayed afloat because the pockets of the blue shirt acted like airbags.”
After a while, the stories quieted. The kitchen filled with the scent of jam and freshly warmed scones. Grandma pushed back her chair and stood, hands smoothing down her skirt like she was bracing herself.
“I was saving these for Christmas,” she said, disappearing into the next room, “but I think now is the right time.”
When she came back, her arms were full of wrapped parcels, the wrapping all various shades of blue, bits of brown and blue ribbon, and sealed with some sort of blue tape that looked suspiciously like the roll grandpa always had in his fishing tackle box. She handed one to each of us.
“You go first, Michael,” she said.
He tore the paper open. Inside was a fishing hat, wide-brimmed and sturdy. Around the crown, a band of blue fabric was stitched, and where it joined sat a small golden trout.
His hands froze. “Is this…”
Grandma nodded. “Part of Grandpa’s shirt.”
Michael blinked fast. “This is… awesome.”
“For luck,” she said gently. “Like it always was for him.”
The girls opened their gifts next, patchwork tote bags. Each had two bright blue flowers stitched on the front, their centres were brown buttons, the material and buttons from the shirt.
“Open them,” Grandma said, nodding toward the bags.
Inside were paper envelopes, hand-labelled with Grandpa’s favourite flower seeds.
“We could grow them,” Molly said. “In the yard.”
“In memory of him,” Larissa added softly.
Cheryl and I opened ours together. Aprons, hand-sewn, neat stitches. Each had a large blue pocket stitched to the front.
“There’s something inside,” I said.
We both reached in and pulled out recipe cards. Grandpa’s favourite chocolate cake recipe, written in Grandma’s cursive handwriting. Until now the recipe had been grandma’s secret.
Cheryl and I wrapped our arms around Grandma and gave her a big hug , just the type Grandpa used to give all of us.
Dan opened a small wooden box. Inside, lined in blue fabric, lay one of Grandpa’s old war medals.
Grandma didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she looked over at the photo on the bookcase, Grandpa, smiling in his blue shirt, trout in hand, sun hitting the side of his face just right.
Her hand rested on her chest over her heart. “He’s not gone, he is here in our hearts. We’ve got memories, stories, and a bit of that shirt stitched into everything he left behind.”
We all sat there quietly. The sun dipped lower through the kitchen window, softening the edges of the day. The scones once again cold. No one minded.
