Grandparents Never Die, They Sleep In Our Hearts

Grandparents never die, they become invisible to rest in our hearts, like the best of legacies. We all have a favorite grandfather or grandmother that we remember often.

Even more, his figure has been impregnated in our family legacy, to the point that we follow many of his customs: in the recipes of those cakes, in those home remedies for health …

We keep his memory alive through different dimensions where the true richness of the human being is concentrated: the memory of the people we love and who were significant in our life. Today we invite you to reflect on it.

How to say goodbye to grandparents?

One of the most difficult moments for a child is having to say goodbye to a grandparent in their early childhood. If we do it when we are adults, the impact is different, because we have more resources to face what is the law of life.

Now, what is the best way to help children say goodbye to one of their grandparents? In this article we propose a series of guidelines that may be helpful.

The duel in the smallest

Every child experiences his particular grief when facing the loss of a significant person. It is something that we cannot forget and, although our child is apparently fine, the internal processes that he undergoes can leave their mark.

Pedagogues always recommend us to be honest with children and take good care of the language. We should not make use of metaphors such as: “the angels have taken the grandfather” or “the grandfather is now asleep.”

It is necessary to avoid those phrases that can mislead the child. Since this is going to be their first experience with death, they must know what it means: not to see the loved one anymore but, at the same time, to have to learn to remember him, every day, with affection.

Another aspect that we must take into account is emotional relief. We should not hide to cry, to avoid our children seeing us suffer. In the long term, this may cause them to hide themselves when they feel bad, too.

The importance of venting and saying goodbye

We should not be afraid to vent and respect in turn that the child cries if he needs it.

Likewise, we have to be very intuitive in the grief of children. It is common that they do not finish processing what happened until after a while. We will see it in his drawings, in his silences and even his nightmares.

Another mistake many parents make is preventing children from saying goodbye to their grandparents or being at the funeral. Whether we like it or not, all of this is part of the duel and the farewell itself.

Obviously, everything will depend on the age of a child, but we can say that from 6 or 7 years our children are already very receptive to these harsh events, as sensitive as having to say goodbye to grandparents.

The personal legacy that our grandparents leave us

In this society so focused at times on the material, few things can help us to be better people like that inheritance of affections, stories and moments shared with our grandparents.

A grandfather or a grandmother can bequeath us a house, an apple orchard or even a precious hundred-year-old china. However, none of that matters for the language of the heart.

Grandparents have been parents and have helped us to be the people we are now, with some mistakes, but also with enormous virtues.

• The legacy of a grandfather is therefore twofold and tremendously powerful. They symbolize the roots of a family and a common identity that we cannot and must not forget.

• A child keeps forever all those moments lived with grandparents. Because their relationship is different from the one they have with their parents, it is something more intimate and purely emotional.
• A heritage woven from thousands of stories: walks in the middle of the afternoon when we come home from school, a cake with that unmistakable smell that we still remember and a voice that we will never forget.

Grandparents never really leave

Saying goodbye to a grandfather who has done so much for us is not easy. However, growing and maturing implies, in turn, dealing with these vital goodbyes.

Now, they are relative goodbyes, because we all carry in the middle of our hearts those grandparents who, far from disappearing, have only become invisible to continue taking care of us and so that we continue to keep them alive through that wonderful gift of which we all have: the memory.