She Has Gone Home

The phone call came this afternoon.  As I stepped out of a meeting the message light beckoned and on there was my mother’s voice giving me the inevitable news; mormor had passed.  As we mourn as a family we cry not for her but for ourselves, for we are the children left behind.  She gets what she wanted; peace and to be be with her husband.  We also get what we wanted; her to be in peace, with no pain, together with the man whom she loved more than anything.  And yet, the sorrow has just begun to settle in.

I now go through the world without any grandparents but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a past.  I will show my children the videos of these two people who showed me what dedication and love means.  What perseverance and staying together looks like in our much too frantic society.  We have proof that love matters most; it is our veins, it is in our heritage.  It is up to us to pass it on.

Tomorrow would be the day, 66 years ago, that my grandparents met each other and fell in love.  I cannot think of anything more beautiful than that my grandmother got to go be with my grandfather once again.  That perhaps tomorrow she gets to meet him again, wherever they are, and now they don’t ever have to leave the other one behind.  So I smile through my tears and vow to never forget and to carry them with us wherever we go.  Mormor heard about the twins, how they are a boy and a girl, and I cannot help but wonder if Ida and Oskar wont get just a little bit of my grandparents soul in them.  I hope so.