Letters to my grandchildren
It’s been quite some time since my last REAL post. A lot has been happening, in life and in the business. A lot is going on in the world.
Over many months I’ve been busy working on a new website, but more importantly, the content within it. I’ve trimmed the fat. Got rid of the stuff that didn’t really need to be there and replaced it with something much more useful. Close to 200 pages of it, actually.
Anyway, this isn’t about that. It’s about my mum and my kids.
When Mum was dying, she wrote letters to her kids. Beautiful letters that she asked us to give to them later, when they needed them. She was thinking 18 or 21, but we decided our kids needed them now.
It’s been almost five years, and as they become young adults (well, teenagers), we felt they needed a little voice from the ether.
Most of what makes up these letters are simply stories. A trip to the art gallery. A book they read. A dinner they made. Just everyday things that made her heart well up with pride.
She imparts a little word of wisdom here and there, and it comforts me that she was able to do this. That before she left, she thought about the people she was leaving behind. That she wanted to somehow still be there for them.
And now, years later, they get to know a little more about their grandmother through her own words.
I think that’s pretty bloody special.
“I’m sorry I won’t be around to see you as a grownup, but I will know. Every day you give me clues as to the type of person you are becoming and I squirrel that knowledge away….all to myself.”
It also got me thinking about the things we leave behind. Not the big things necessarily, but the little pieces of ourselves that might one day mean something to someone else.
A story. A photograph. A recipe. A stupid joke. A letter written when you knew you wouldn’t be around to tell them yourself.
Maybe that’s what these letters really are.
A little bit of Mum, waiting for them when they need it.
“I’ve had you for such a short time in my life, a time that was filled with love and wonder every day. I am greedy and want more time with you, but with Beginnings and Endings, we cannot choose our lifetime. So now it is time for me to pass on the baton to your auntie and uncle.”