Grandparents Never Die, They Become Invisible

Grandparents never die, they become invisible and sleep forever deep in our hearts.

Even today, we miss them and we would give anything to listen to their stories again, to feel their caresses and their eyes imbued with infinite tenderness.

We know it is the law of life. While grandparents have the privilege of seeing us born and growing up, we witness their old age and we see them leave this world.

Their loss is almost always the first farewell we face in childhood.

Grandparents who participate in the education of their grandchildren leave traces in their souls, a legacy that will accompany them in their lives like timeless seeds of love for the days when they will be invisible.

Today it is very common to see grandparents involved in the chores of raising their grandchildren.

They are invaluable support for families today. Yet their role is not the same as that of a father or a mother, and it is something that children feel very early on.

The bond between grandparents and grandchildren is created from a much more intimate and deep bond.

Their loss can therefore often be a delicate time in the mind of a child or adolescent. We invite you to think about this.

Farewell to grandparents: the first experience of loss

Many people are privileged to have their grandparents by their side when they reach adulthood.

Others, on the other hand, have to face their death from an early childhood, at this age when we do not fully understand loss in all its definition and where adults sometimes explain it poorly.

Sometimes they try to soften the concept of death or act like “if it doesn’t hurt”.

Most psycho-pedagogues tell us very well: you must always tell a child the truth.

It is necessary to adapt the message to one’s age, of course, but many parents make the mistake of avoiding, for example, a final farewell between child and grandparent or use metaphors like “grandpa is in a star ” or “ granny sleeps in the sky ”⋅ 

• Children should be explained about death in a simple way without metaphors so that they do not get the wrong idea. If we tell them that the grandfather is gone, the child is likely to ask when is he going to come back.

• If we explain death to the little one from a determined religious vision, it is necessary to insist on the fact that “he is not going to return”. A small child can only absorb limited amounts of information, so the explanations should be short and simple.

It is also important to know that death is not a taboo and that the tears of adults should not be hidden from the eyes of children.

We all suffer at some point from the loss of a loved one and there is a need to talk about it and find relief.

Children do it at their own pace and we must be facilitators of this process, whenever they need it.

Children will ask us lots of questions and they will need the most patient and understanding answers.

The loss of grandparents in childhood or in adolescence is complex so it is necessary to go through this bereavement as a family, awakening your intuition to listen to any children’s needs.

Even if they are no longer there, they remain very present

Grandparents, even if they are no longer there, remain very present in our lives, in these common settings that we share with our families and even in this oral heritage that we offer to new generations.

The grandparents took our hand for a while, they taught us to walk, but then they supported our hearts, where they will sleep eternally offering us their light, their memory.

Their presence still inhabits the yellowish photographs that we keep in frames and not in the memory of a telephone.

The grandparent is in this tree that he planted with his hands, in this dress that she sewed and that we keep.

There is always the smell of these cakes that inhabits our emotional memory. Their memory is also in each of the advice they gave us, in the stories they told us, in the way we tie our laces and even in that little dimple we inherited from them.

Grandparents don’t die, because they are embedded in our emotions in a more delicate and deep way than just genetics.

They taught us to go a little slower and at their own pace, to savor an afternoon in the countryside, to discover that good books have a special smell because there is language that goes far beyond words.

It is the language of a hug, a caress, a knowing smile and an afternoon walk where we share silences while admiring the sunset.

All of this will last forever, and it is here that the true eternity of people is found.

In the loving legacy of the people who truly love us and whom we honor by thinking about it every day.