The Caring Spirit of Grandparents

Some people born and live far from their grandparents, yet they receive the warmest love when they meet eye to eye. Others only know their ancestors from pictures and there are many, who live close to them and enjoy a dose of immeasurable human protection that becomes priceless in life. My belief is that our grandparents’ love for us never pass on, rather we carry their love, their strength inside of us, in our hearts until we die.

I consider my relationships with my family members far from normal, the opposite of loving, perhaps the word is not too harsh: lifeless. We live thousands of miles apart and we do not communicate. When I have to talk to my sister it always ends in an argument. Her sons think of me as an enemy not as uncle. My cousins and their children do not know my immediate family, and I do not know theirs. I said it before many times: I do not care, why bother with them, life goes on, screw them.

Then something strange happens, a reoccurring dream with my grandparents. They passed away 15 years ago, but in my dreams they come alive time to time. In these dreams I am still a child, grandma and grandpa are holding my hands as we walk on the beach and repeating poems that they taught me. We are counting the clouds. As it gets dark we look for the Northern Star on the sky. In the morning my grandfather and I go to the grocery store. I sit on his blue bicycle behind him and watch my shadow on the road as the wind kisses my face. In the dream I am weightless, happy and being loved, but then I wake up in the middle of night to notice that I am crying from the mixed feelings of happiness and pain as I miss my grandparents. I cannot go back to sleep. I want to continue the dream, but also I want to know why my grandparents haunt me. I doubt that anybody would understand my dreams, so I never tell anyone.

Unknowingly I start to rewind the past. I reevaluate my accomplishments in life. I feel the need to turn back the time. In this process I realize that there is nothing in my family’s possession anymore that links my family members to my grandparents, therefore nothing connects us. The family got rid of everything, and the last thing we can grab on to is our family ties, the feelings that we enjoy each other, that we can share memories together and something that we can pass on to our sons and daughters. Thus one day they can also cherish memories of their grandparents and learn from them long after they are gone. So I dial the telephone, sending the emails in order to restart the engine of my family and give thanks for the new lesson for my much-loved Grandma and Grandpa.