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Ask Your Grandparents
They won’t be here forever.
I recently saw a friend’s post on Facebook about talking to your grandparents, learning about their pasts, their histories, their lives before they were grandparents, before it was too late to ask them.
That stuck with me. I loved my grandparents very much. I still do. They’ve been gone for years now, but it still seems like yesterday. My first grandfather crossed over in 1996, my last grandmother most recently in 2016, each loss leaving a giant hole in my heart. All four of them figured heavily into my upbringing, shaping me into who I am today.
My mom was a single mother for a while, my father having passed away in a car accident when she was pregnant with me. Both sets of grandparents helped to raise me up through my adult years with plenty of love, some frustration at times, but I always felt secure when I was with them. They were safe places for me in a turbulent childhood.
When it came to talking, my grandmothers would tell more about their earlier lives than my grandfathers. Grandma Ruth, especially, would tell stories about growing up on the farm in western Michigan (the idea having to use an outhouse both fascinated and appalled me)and about her time as an Army nurse in WWII, which was really important to her. When I began working on the farm at Greenfield Village, she couldn’t understand why…
