The White-Haired Grandma
Last names didn't apply to grandparents. It's not like there were a lot of them left by the time my son came along, the youngest of a youngest of a youngest, with only two complete sets among us. Not like my friends' children who had their Nana's and Papa's and Grandma Helen's and Grandpa Burt's. We didn't need that kind of code to tell them apart, we thought.
But my son thought differently, and even though there were only two of them, they became the Black-Haired Grandma and the White-Haired Grandma, and I could almost feel my husband's mother cringe at the description of her light hair. But she smiled through it. Like she smiled through the six months or so when we each went by the name of a ninja turtle, and the White-Haired Grandma was temporarily Donatello. How happy she was to populate his imagination. How often she wished out loud that she could get down on the floor and play like she had with her children and grandchildren. My son would be her last.
The White-Haired Grandma. Where else would he ever find that kind of love? And when she died, the summer after second grade, the memory of it grew out of him like he grew out of action figures and imaginary names.
Is a loss as great if we don't know it? Or greater? My son has played hundreds of soccer games without his grandma on the sidelines, birthdays and Christmases have come and gone, and there is no one who stops by our house just to see his latest toy. And he is happy.
While my heart aches for an empty space around his life that was once filled with love, like God must ache for us who forget Him.
But my son thought differently, and even though there were only two of them, they became the Black-Haired Grandma and the White-Haired Grandma, and I could almost feel my husband's mother cringe at the description of her light hair. But she smiled through it. Like she smiled through the six months or so when we each went by the name of a ninja turtle, and the White-Haired Grandma was temporarily Donatello. How happy she was to populate his imagination. How often she wished out loud that she could get down on the floor and play like she had with her children and grandchildren. My son would be her last.
The White-Haired Grandma. Where else would he ever find that kind of love? And when she died, the summer after second grade, the memory of it grew out of him like he grew out of action figures and imaginary names.
Is a loss as great if we don't know it? Or greater? My son has played hundreds of soccer games without his grandma on the sidelines, birthdays and Christmases have come and gone, and there is no one who stops by our house just to see his latest toy. And he is happy.
While my heart aches for an empty space around his life that was once filled with love, like God must ache for us who forget Him.
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