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| Comforting words from Penny |
By Dad
The girls made get-well cards when my dad fell ill in my native Britain recently.
We wondered whether they’d arrive before Grandpa’s expected discharge from hospital a few days later. When his condition turned life-threatening, the new question was whether I could get to see him before he passed.
Dad died at age 81, two days after I arrived in Britain.
Dora took the news the hardest, expressing feelings of guilt for not having gone to Britain with me. At 13, she was in the midst of studying for a career-setting high-school entry exam. There had been no question of her letting that go. But that failed to console her.
“Times are tough,” Dora wrote in a card to her grandma. “But we still have one another. I am sorry for your loss.”
Very mature. But her absence continued to play on her mind, for she even focused on not having visited her dying grandpa as the theme for a school essay entitled: “My Biggest Mistake.”
At 10, Penny focused on how lonely her grandma might now be, and said she should come to live with us in New York.
Both she and her six-year-old sister, Cathy, pictured their grandpa in heaven.
“I know that Grandpa passed away, but it’s good that he’s in heaven with his mother and father,” wrote – and drew – Penny in one of her cards.
Cathy had the opposite thought, saying Grandpa might be lonely in heaven because he’d miss Grandma and his children.
She also used her card to give her grandma words of comfort that only a six-year-old could offer.
“You know that not lots of people die that age, so Grandpa is very lucky to die that age.”
It raised a smile out of Grandma.
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| Cathy's cute condolence |
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