There’s something special about grandparents and grandchildren. There’s a bond that really can’t be replicated in other relationships because it’s not one based entirely in reality.
In most relationships we have with people, we have to see the other for who they truly are. We have to see the good and the bad, and we have to work with both. For many, the only relationships that we have that are closer than that with our grandparents are the ones we have with our immediate family. But when you live with people day in and day out for decades, you are forced to see them for who they truly are – warts and all. Parents can’t afford to see their children with rose colored glasses. The task of parenthood requires honesty and total acceptance of the total child.
But grandparents aren’t bound by such conventions. A generation removed and a generation past their own childrearing adventure, they have the luxury of sitting back and enjoying the good in their grandchildren. They don’t have to worry about discipline or spoiling. They don’t have to anticipate the misdeeds of their grandchildren or deal with the consequences. Add to that the fact that grandchildren are the most prized offspring of their own most prized off spring, and you have a situation ripe for idealization.
My grandfather passed away Monday morning, about three and a half years after my grandma passed away. And to be honest, my feelings are so complicated.
On the one hand, I actually feel a lot joy for him. I understand that his time here (96 plus years) was finished. He did his job and he did it well. Now he is free from the shackles of old age and he is with my grandma and with God where he has always belonged. “It’s in dying that we are born to eternal life.” We have to face the end of life in order to experience the beginning.
But as happy as I actually am for him, as at peace as I actually feel for him, I am only human, and I can’t help but mourn my own loss. The loss of my grandparents.
It almost feels as if an era has ended in my life. My link to the very distant past continues on in eternity, but it is ended here on Earth. A piece of my history is over.
But more than that, I just mourn the loss of who I was in my grandparents’ eyes. I miss how they were able to overlook the bad and see only the good in all of us. I miss the way my grandpa used to say “I love you,” when he would pass the phone to my grandma. I miss the way he would grab my hand and squeeze it when I would leave. I miss him picking on me and questing whether I have brains in my head. I miss seeing the way his eyes would light up when he would talk about the Navy or flying planes. And I miss how every time he saw all of his great grandchildren together, he would talk about how it reminded him of his years as a parent to five young children.
And I mourn that. I mourn all of that and so much more.
And then I look at my children and I realize that there is no way my grandparents could ever be really gone. Because I see the relationship the girls have with their grandparents. I see the way my parents love them and idealize them. I see the way Magoo starts jumping up and down when she finds out we are going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I see the way the Goose runs up to my dad repeatedly when she sees him and throws her arms around his legs.
And I know that the legacy continues. It has changed, and links are no longer with us, but the love is always there and will always be there. Because it can’t be broken.
And one day ninety years from now, my great grandchildren might be saying the same about Magoo and the Goose and relishing in the joy that my girls brought to them as grandmothers.
Love never dies. It really can’t. Because it’s possibly the one and only thing that has ever stood the test of the ages.
So godspeed Grandpa. Give Grandma a kiss for us. And know that while you are resting in your eternal reward, we are carrying on your legacy, and your lessons of love will last longer than even your memory. It is your passport to immortality.