Grandfather’s part
Monday March 19th 2007, 12:09 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting


I don’t know who might be needing to read this, but I have been feeling strongly that I needed to write this down today. I have one memory of my Grandfather Jeppson, who died a young grandfather from the effects of the rheumatic fever he’d had years earlier. It was from the last time I saw him, at three and a half: of sitting cuddled up in his lap, with him rocking me in a rocking chair on a wooden-planked floor. When I was little, I frequently had that image come to mind, and it was as if I were wrapped in his strong arms again. I was deeply loved. It comforted me greatly. As I grew into a teenager, the image came far less often, and I decided there was no way to tell if it had been a real memory or a three-year-old’s remembered dream, given that at the age I’d first experienced it, it would have been hard to tell the difference–and I pretty much dismissed it.

It wasn’t till I got quite a bit older that I realized that it didn’t matter which it was; that it had been a comfort and a feeling of the presence of my grandfather whenever I’d needed it as a child. With that, the memory of remembering it became a comfort to me again, now that I am someone facing what he faced way back then: the knowledge of a damaged body that is not likely to see my grandchildren’s children grow old.

In this life or the next, I do believe we look after our loved ones the best we know how.


3 Comments so far
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*hug*

Comment by Shelle 03.19.07 @ 10:32 pm

Your words in this post settled down like a peaceful blanket over my heart. I can’t quite say why, except perhaps that I recognize what you’re saying.

Comment by Joni 03.20.07 @ 5:56 am

Thank you. And Shelle, your Sea Silk shawl is home from Martingale now, whenever you want it. I knit up the teal Christmas Sea Silk into the same pattern so you could have yours while the other one plays dress up/trunk show if need be.

Comment by AlisonH 03.20.07 @ 4:20 pm



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