Something Lost, Something Broken, Something Found

Broken

Sometimes you can't see when a person is breaking until they are already completely broken, shattering like glass against the ground. My grandfather is shattered. If I could see the damage, I imagine it would look like shards of a broken mirror, the glass all mixed up and scattered throughout the front yard. He digs, slamming the metal spoon further and further into the wet dirt. The rich smell of upturned soil fills the air with the raw fragrance of nature. Clumps of grass are discarded, left to dry out in the heat of the day. Their roots reach out like thin, white arms, each limb fighting to free itself from the black and green masses. They lay, upturned, wilting and left to die out in the sun.
"Grandpa?" I whisper, but he ignores me.
"I must find it. Where could it be?" He mumbles. When the hole reaches a foot in diameter he casts aside his spoon in agitation. His face is hopeless. He starts to use his hands to claw against the ground. His old, frail hands tear into the soil.
"Find what?" I ask, "maybe I can help." I reach for the spoon but he swats my hands away.
"Go inside my little flower," He grumbles, "It is not safe out here. The trees are watching." His nails are packed with dirt. They look wrong, tilting further away from his fingers with each swipe of his hands. "The trees have eyes everywhere, black demons hidden beneath the boughs. They want what they can't have. I won't let them have it."
He stops and tilts his head as if listening to something. I strain to hear it as well but there is no sound. Even the birds have ceased their song. "Not long now. They'll be here before nightfall. I can't let them have it," he says. His hands are bleeding.
There is a cry, a terrible sobbing scream that radiates from my mouth. "Please stop!" I beg. I tug him on his shoulders and pull but he doesn't stop, won't stop.
He twists his hands through the grass, like fingers ripping at a head of hair, tearing blades of grass and dirt loose in agitation. "He hid it here from me!" He shouts. "He told me I couldn't find it. I must find it." Dirt is being flung wildly now in every direction.
Grandma comes out. The shock of the scene before her makes her hesitate on the steps. She watches in horror as Grandpa digs, her body seems to collapse in on herself, shoulders falling and knees shaking. He's up to his elbows now in soil. When I cry louder, she is shaken from her trance and runs to me, covering my face in her apron and rushes me into the house.