Letters to my Grandson

Shortly after my Grandson was born, my daughter created an email account in his name. Her idea is that people can send him emails as he is growing up, and she will give him the account on his 18th birthday.

Frankly, statistics would indicate that I am very unlikely to be around to see him reach that birthday. But the account represents a way of me saying to him, over a period of time, all the things I might wish him to know if I was around.

I now write him a letter every Sunday. And ask that he reads them on consecutive Sundays. So I am writing from a date in 2022 to a date in 2038 (for the mathematicians among you, I started late, at 18 months – as his character became more clear to me).

To be frank, sometimes it seems like a scene from ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – me being with him in one year (sometimes with him actually sat on my lap) and writing to him in another year.

The thought that I won’t be around, and that he will be an adult when he reads them, enables me to be totally open and honest with what I am writing to him. Truly authentic (albeit sensitively so) about the things I am, and have, wrestled with, in the hope that they can serve him in wrestling the things he may have to deal with.

Paradoxically, I can be more real to him than if I was actually there.

And I am finding a strange catharsis each Sunday. As I seek to articulate things to him, they also become more clear to me. Things that were concealed at the time come into the light, and I gain new insights about myself and my life. And the knowledge that they may benefit someone I love, 16 years into the future, leaves a strange but comforting feeling in my chest.

Yes, I am sure there will be difficulties along the way. What will I do when/if I have more grandchildren? How will I handle the time when I am more seriously contemplating my imminent mortality (in this life at least)? But, like all journeys, I am sure that things will become clearer as I get closer to them.

And in the meantime, I have to confess a huge joy in using an hour or two of my Sunday morning in this way.

#Legacy #Generations #Grandparenthood #Letters #Therapy