My grandfather died on July 2nd 2007.

Dear Grandpa,

You've always had a way of making me feel better, even if you didn't know all the answers to my questions. I seek for your comforting words now, and I hear them in my heart.
I'm glowering around my room wondering where all this empty space has gone. I search for photos of you~and I find only one.

You are so young and you sit in the old worn down home that I knew as a child. Your photo speaks so much to me, or maybe I'm trying to discover more to it. It's a small black and white picture and within it you are suspended in time, savored by a photo. Life continues long after the picture is taken~and even the photo seems to linger longer than life.
Over the years I have often wondered of the person you once were. If only I could experience the past and see you as a child, a teenager, a young man. What were you like then? What was it like to live in that time?
You were ninety-eight years old when you died. You have seen so many things. I remember your stories that you use to tell over and over again. You were an amazing man.
You and grandma have helped birth new generations of individuals, and even now as we grieve your passing, you have reunited families. You bring together once again, loved ones.
Oh grandpa! Why do we get old? Our bodies no longer resemble the person we still see ourselves as. Hopes and dreams from our childhoods have a way of gathering dust at our feet as life happens and unfolds before us. Life has a way of changing our destinations and taking us on differnt adventures than what we had planned for ourselves.
I am thankful that God has blessed us with the ability to remember. Within our memories we can revisit our dreams, our desires, our wants, and they'll be right there, as though they never left. They may be covered with dust and stained with time, but the joy we feel when remembering them is the same.
I will forever remember your laugh, your big eyes, and your hands that have worked so hard your whole life. You are a book that I don't want to end, but as with all things and ending is definite.
I can see you in your garden right now. Watering and talking to your plants as though they understand. Looking back I believe that they did listen to you and knew what you were saying. Your garden was alot like life~it always needed to be nurtured and cared for in order to grow, blossom, and bare fruit.
Sitting under your fruit trees as a child and eating plums, I didn't have a care in the world. The hot summer sun beating down, the smell of the earth beneath me, will always be one of my favorite memories when visiting you. I can almost hear you calling my name from the front porch~I love you grandpa!
A new life is on the horizon! One in which our bodies never age and smiles never cease. I'll see you there someday and I'll hear your laugh once more.
In my thoughts we will meander through your garden hand in hand, and in my memories and in my heart I will always find you.

Learn more about this author, Gloria Swan.
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