I was very close to my grandpa. He seemed to understand me in a way that others who spent more time with me did not. He was warm and funny and loved to read books with me and make me ice cream shakes. That’s why I was so upset when he passed away. He was old and both of us knew it would eventually happen, but we never spoke about it – that was what was so cool about Grandpa – we knew each other so well, we didn’t always have to talk about everything, just feel it.
I grieved in the only way I knew how. I stayed in my room, with my stuffed animals,
and slept a lot. Mom and Dad were
concerned, especially Mom since Grandpa was her dad, but they didn’t try to
push me too hard. After the funeral, mom came to my room and said that Grandpa
had left me a letter:
Dearest
Chloe,
You
have always been the person who I wanted to spend time with more than any
other. If you’re getting this, it means
that I have hopefully ended up in heaven after a long, full life. Please don’t worry about me. But I do want you to know that if I can, I
will come back and check on you from time to time. Tell your mom to leave the little red wagon
in your yard. If I come back as an
animal I will sit in the little red wagon and you will know it is me.
Love,
Grandpa
I went out to the backyard and my wagon was right where I
had left it, near the shed. There were
no squirrels or birds or even insects in it, but I got some cleaner from Mom
and shined it up really well. Then I sat
on the porch and waited for anything to jump in for ride, but nothing came
until I had to go inside.
Day after day I sat on the porch, hoping to see my Grandpa
come back to check on me like he promised, but as time went by, I figured that
maybe he was not able to come back and see me after all. I wasn’t mad at him – I knew if could have
come to see me he would have. Years
passed and I moved away for college and started a family of my own. My mom gave me the red wagon for my kids to
play with and I had mixed feelings about it.
It was a source of hope and disappointment at the same time, but
disappointment is fleeting and hope is eternal, so I kept it. I even looked out at it in the backyard from
time to time like I did as a kid, hoping to see a creature sitting in it
staring back at me.
My kids liked the wagon when they were young. My five-year-old daughter, Gracy, would pull
my four-year-old son, Michael, to take him fake shopping around the yard. I got lots of cute pictures of them and the
wagon reclaimed its significance in my life.
Time went on and eventually my parents passed away. When I was going through their things, I
found some old photos of our family and even older ones of Grandpa. In one of them, my grandpa, as a small boy,
was riding in a very similar Radio Flyer wagon to the one I had played with as
a child and he had mentioned in the letter.
And the photo, though black and white and grainy, looked eerily similar
to the old photos I had of Michael, who was now an accountant with H&R
Block.
I went to my computer and pulled up the photos from when
Michael was a toddler and there he was, grinning at the camera the same way
grandpa was grinning in the old photo from the 1930’s. I printed the picture and when Michael and
his family visited us for Christmas, I showed him the two pictures after
Christmas dinner. He looked at me in
bewilderment and said, “Chloe, didn’t you get my letter?”