An Apology out of Season: Grand Pear’s Sorrow
Grand Pear was sitting at his desk, making plans for his business. Winter was almost over and he needed to get everything ready for spring. He was scrawling a note, when he heard the mail slot moving. How strange, he wasn’t expecting any mail today. He stood up and walked over to the door and saw a white envelope lying on the floor.
He was shocked when he looked at the address. The letter was from his daughter in Ponyville. He hadn’t expected her to be sending him letters after what had happened. This must be some kind of apology. His daughter must have come to her senses and wanted to come back to him.
He chuckled to himself as he began to open the letter. It was about time that his daughter gave him an apology. He snorted when he finished reading the letter. Then he crumpled the letter up and threw it into the trash.
Grand Pear shook his head. His daughter had sent him an invitation to the Apple family reunion. There was no way he going to go to a reunion for the Apples. He loathed the very idea. His daughter was indeed very foolish if she thought that he would ever do something like that.
Grand Pear walked back to his desk. He picked his quill up again and continued scrawling away. The quill made scratching noises as he wrote himself a note. It was a reminder to tell Scotty that they would need to expand the warehouse again, because of all of the new orders for pear jam.
____
It was near the end of spring and Grand Pear was in his orchard. Pear Candy walked up to him while he examined a small sapling that he had just finished planting. “Your daughter sent you a letter,” Pear Candy said.
Grand Pear straightened up and looked at Pear Candy. It had been nearly a year since the last letter from his daughter. He was still mad at her for what had happened. His daughter had to have learned her lesson by now. He figured that the letter had to be some kind of apology.
He took the letter from Pear Candy and said, “Let’s see what we have here.” He opened the envelope and noticed that it had both a picture and a letter inside of it. Curious, he looked at the picture. It showed his daughter holding a tiny red colt with orange hair. There was a big smile stretched across his daughter’s face.
His daughter’s happiness brought a smile to his face. While he stared at his daughters face he completely forgot about the baby colt in her hands. Eventually he shifted his focus to the letter. As he read through the letter his eyes grew moist.
A small sigh escaped his mouth when he reached the end of the letter. The baby colt in the picture was his daughter’s first born. He was a grandfather now. His grandson’s name was Big Macintosh. A small tear rolled down his cheek.
“Are you okay Grand Pear? Did something happen to Pear Butter?” Pear Candy asked.
Grand Pear was startled by Pear Candy’s question. He had completely forgotten that Pear Candy was there. With shaky hooves, he put the letter and photo back into the envelop. “It’s nothing important. I’m going to go and check on something in the barn. Can you finish planting the saplings?” Grand Pear asked.
Pear Candy saw a strange look in Grand Pear’s eyes. Before he could figure out what was going on, Grand Pear began to walk away. Pear Candy shrugged his shoulders. Whatever the look was didn’t matte he, had to finish planting the rest of the saplings.
As Grand Pear entered the barn he took a deep breath to calm down. When his hooves had stopped shaking he glanced at the letter that he held between his hooves. For a second he just stood in the middle of the barn. Then he tossed the envelope onto a table. Without a second thought, he moved to the back of the barn to look for something.
____
Grand Pear sat in the shade of his house and sipped lemonade. It was near the end of summer and he had just finished harvesting the last of the pears. He sighed in contentment as he stared out at his orchard. It had been a great year for his business. He was glad that he decided to move to Vanhoover.
A short time later a mail pony walked up to him and said, “I’ve got some mail for you, sir.” Then he handed a small envelope to Grand Pear and walked away.
Grand Pear looked at the address on the envelope. It was a letter from his daughter. He was surprised that she had even bothered to send him another letter. It had been more than a year since the last letter he had received from her. He had assumed that she had completely forgotten about him.
A moment later Grand Pear opened the envelop up to see what his daughter wanted. There was both a picture and letter inside of it just like her last letter. When he looked at the picture he was surprised to see his daughter holding a baby filly.
The baby filly had an orange coat with a bright yellow mane. His daughter looked so happy with the sleeping baby in her arms. It brought tears to his eyes to see that his daughter was so happy. Eventually he shifted his focus to the letter.
The first part of the letter told him that the baby filly’s name was Applejack. It took a moment for him to realize that he now had a granddaughter. He now had two grandchildren in Ponyvillie. A small chuckle left his mouth when he had processed the thought.
It took him a moment to focus his thought back on the letter. The rest of it appeared to be highlights for the last year that he had missed. Apparently, his grandson had grown quite a bit in the last year and he had recently begun to walk all by himself.
For a moment, he just stared blankly at the letter. It hurt to hear that his daughter had a life all her own. She no longer needed him. She had her own family with those gosh darn Apples.
Grand Pear gritted his teeth for a minute. Well if she didn’t need him anymore he didn’t need her either. He folded the letter and picture back into the envelope. Then he walked back into his house and threw the envelope onto a table. He felt a small tinge of guilt as the paper came to a rest, but he soon got over it as he went back outside to finish his lemonade.
____
Grand Pear was staring out of his window. It was around the middle of fall and most of the leaves had fallen off his pear trees. Grand Pear barely noticed the beautiful look of the changing seasons. His mind was elsewhere.
There was an envelope lying on his desk in front of him. It was another letter from his daughter. He hadn’t opened it yet because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. It had been almost five years since he had heard from his daughter.
The rift between them had continued to grow over the years. He had thought that his daughter had forgotten him. It was clear to him by this point that they would never be able to settle their differences. He sighed and put the letter away without opening it. There was no point in reading it.
____
Several months latter Grand Pear was sitting in front of his fireplace. It was now the middle of winter and he could see large drifts of snow outside his windows. As he enjoyed the warmth of the burning fire, he heard the clicking of his mail slot.
He stood up from his chair and went to retrieve the mail. One letter in particular stood out to him. It was from Ponyville. At first, he had thought that it was from his daughter, but then he realized that the writing looked different.
The writing looked shaky and crooked. Whoever wrote on the envelope definitely wasn’t his daughter. He was thinking of just ignoring it, but changed his mind a second later. It was to strange of a letter to ignore.
Grand Pear ripped open the envelope and began to read it. He soon learned that the letter had been written by Granny Smith. That made him a little angry at first, but that anger quickly vanished as he continued reading.
The letter spoke of his daughter and her husband. What it said about them made his hooves shake. Tears filled his eyes making it so he couldn’t finish reading, but that didn’t matter to him anyway. The letter was to devastating too read any more.
The letter slipped from his hooves and fluttered slowly to the floor. Grand Pear stood in the middle of the room with tears rolling down his cheeks. His eyes stared blankly at the floor. His mind replayed the words over and over inside of his head.
It took a while for his brain to fully comprehend what was in the letter. A huge sob escaped his throat when he finally understood what had happened. His daughter, Pear Butter, had passed away. He would never see her again.
Grand Pear slumped to the floor. He didn’t know what to do. It felt like his heart was broken. His daughter was gone and he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her.
The last time he had talked to her was when she had foolishly married that Apple. Thinking back to that moment made him feel worse. He had yelled at his daughter pretty harshly. His tears began to fall to the floor as he understood what he had done.
He began to cry intensely as soon as he understood the gravity of what he had done. Grand Pear had disowned his daughter and hurt her. He wanted to fix it, to make everything okay. Nothing could be done though. It was already too late. There wasn’t anything he could do to change what he had done.
It was a long time before his tears stopped flowing. He felt completely drained. The letter lying on the floor caught his attention. For a moment, he just stared at it, not entirely sure why it had caught his attention.
It took him a moment to realize that he hadn’t read the whole letter. He picked it up again not sure if he really wanted to continue reading it. There was a part of him that didn’t want to relive the pain, but another part of him wanted to know more about what had happened to his daughter.
Grand Pear continued to read from the point where he left off. When he had finished reading the letter, some of his sadness had disappeared. There was going to be a memorial service held at Sweet Apple Acres. He sighed as he realized that he would at least be able to say goodbye to his daughter one last time.
____
Grand Pear stood on the edge Sweet Apple Acres. There was a bouquet of buttercups in his mouth. He watched as ponies assembled themselves in a small part of the orchard. His hoof hovered over the edge of their land. He didn’t want to take the next step forward.
Before he was able to make up his mind a figure walked out of the orchard. Granny Smith stopped moving a short distance away from him. She said nothing and just stared at him with a stern look in her eyes.
Grand Pear stared back at her, unsure of what to do. For a moment, nether one of them moved, then Granny Smith moved slightly to the side and gestured for him to move forward. Grand Pear hesitated for just a second, stepping into the orchard. Granny Smith turned around and walked toward the gathering of ponies. Grand Pear followed quietly behind her.
The two of them stopped near the edge of the gathered ponies. There was a somber atmosphere around them. Slowly the ponies formed themselves into a line. Near the end of the line was a polished gravestone.
Grand Pear swallowed nervously as he stood at the back of the line. He waited patiently as everpony was given a chance to say their goodbyes. The line moved forward at a slow pace. It was a nerve-racking experience for him. The closer he got to the gravestone the more his heart ached.
Grand Pear soon stood in front of his daughter’s grave. He had been standing in the line for only a few minutes, but it had felt like hours to him. For a moment he just stood there silently looking down at the grave. Then he respectfully placed the buttercups in front of the grave.
The action of placing the flowers broke his heart. Tears began to fall from his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said. Before he completely broke down Grand Pear forced himself to move away from the grave. He was afraid that if he stayed he would never be able to leave.
It took all of his remaining strength to not look back as he left the orchard. He may have been able to say sorry to his daughter, but it didn’t change anything. Nothing ever could change what he had done. He was so angry with himself. Why hadn’t he apologized sooner?
Deep down he knew that he would never be able to forgive himself for his past sins. It was already too late for that. There was only one thing that he could do from now on; to keep moving forward. If he didn’t do that, he knew that his sadness would consume him. So, he kept his mind blank not looking at his surroundings as left the orchard.
____
Grand Pear sat at his desk looking through some old papers. It had been almost twelve years since his goodbye to his daughter. Since that time, he had tried his best to avoid any memories of her. He had poured all of his energy into his work.
His single-minded devotion had turned his business into a vast empire. There wasn’t a pony in or around Vanhoover who hadn’t heard of him and his pear jam. Even though the last twelve years had been very good for his business he barely remembered any of it. The past no longer meant anything to him. The only thing that was now left to him was the future. It was the only thing that gave him purpose in life now.
So, he continued to read through his papers. As he flipped to a new page he noticed that something was stuck in between the pages. It was an old, unopened envelope. He thought it was odd that it had never been opened so he looked to see who it was from.
Grand Pear froze in place as his eyes locked onto the address. The letter was from Ponyville. A flood of ancient memories came charging to the front of his mind, bringing tears with them. Even though it had been many years, he could tell right away that the writing was his daughter’s.
That’s when he remembered that day he had gotten the envelope in the first place. He grew angry with himself. Why hadn’t he opened this envelope? He should have cared more about his daughter. Grand Pear angrily tore the envelope open and pulled the letter out. There was a picture attached to the letter.
As he looked closely at the picture, a small smile appeared on his face. His daughter sat looking up at the camera with a big smile on her face. There was a small bundle of blankets in her arms. Grand Pear looked closer. The buddle of blankets turned out to be a baby filly with bright yellow hair and a red mane.
It was one of the happiest pictures he had ever seen in his entire life. He continued to stare at it for several minutes before he turned his attention to the letter. As he read through the letter his smile became wider. The letter explained that the foal in the picture was named Apple Bloom. She was his Granddaughter.
He reread the letter several times. Then he looked back at the picture. It made him realize something. He had three Grandchildren that he had never met in his life. That thought made his heart ache and tears form at the edges of his eyes.
For a moment, he was filled with regret, but that didn’t last long. That regret was soon replaced with determination. He slammed his hoof down on his desk. There was a look of hope in his eyes. He was going to fix this before it was too late. It was time to do what he should have done in the first place and see his family.
Without waiting a second longer Grand Pear stood up from his desk. He was going to make sure that nothing would ever keep him from his family ever again. He just hoped that it wasn’t too late and that his family would forgive him.
