Dear Nana

Guilt, regret, shame, despair must have tugged at your heart keeping you in pain, separated from your children and later your grandchildren. Over the years, never involved in your son’s life, I rarely saw you. I never had the grandmother that my friends had for dinner or spent the weekend with.

Life changed for you with your children and husband gone, your outer beauty faded, yet the lingering memories remained of choices made. Remarried to a man bedridden with Parkinson’s you cared for him until his death, maybe an attempt to redeem the years of self-absorption. I hope you found true love realizing your value doesn’t come from performing in bed, but living life serving others, making choices without regret based upon God’s word, and knowing His unfailing love for you.

I observed you in your wheelchair a grandmother I once longed to hold dear to my heart. In my early twenties, at the time, I struggled for the words to say in my superficial conversation. Preparing to return home with my husband I said good bye with plans to visit. Years passed and I never did.

My father called to inform me of your death. I stopped working at my desk. For a moment I listened. Would I go to your memorial servic? My life was busy building my career, pregnant with my first child, buying my first home. I had no time to mourn your loss, a woman unknown to me. But today, ten years later I wept the loss of an opportunity to reach out to a lonely woman related to me, imprisoned to a chair, longing to be loved and forgiven. I mourned for my father whose selfish daughter was unavailable during his time of loss.

From you I learned that choices impact generations. The consequences of promiscuity caused unborn children to be sacrificed by abortion. Your spouse and children were victims of abandonment through your emotional detachment and betrayal, ripped apart forever through the devastation of divorce. The legacy of infidelity and divorce passed down to your son influenced another generation; shaping society around me, my children and theirs.

Aware of your mistakes I make the choice to change the pattern set before me. I follow a narrow path. I no longer condemn you for I could have easily fallen into the same temptation, but the truth has set me free, empowered by the Spirit, my old ways are gone. I stand a new woman no longer a little girl looking for a father's love through sexual immorality.

Nana, your frail body just an outer shell of a hurting soul wounded from a past that no one will ever understand. Only God can fully know how deep the suffering brought your way of choices made. From Him a plan of healing that surpasses earthly wisdom is granted to all that choose to follow. Now, gone to a place uncertain, you leave behind your pain that others bare with lessons to be learned. Grateful for the life brought through your son, my father, I live today. Forgive me my neglect, for not reaching out to you, to show you mercy and compassion, for I had none to give.

Remembering you,
Your Grandaughter