Dear Grandpa Sam,

I never knew you. When I was born, you were already in the thick of a long, tiring battle against Alzheimer’s disease. It was an endless battle, taking you all the way to your deathbed, seven years ago.

I was so young. I didn’t understand why I would come home from school waiting to hug mom, only to find her sobbing so silently through tears of glass, crumpled on the laundry room floor. Her shoulders would shake violently and her delicate frame looked as if it would shatter any second. I was afraid to touch her for fear that I would only hurt her more.

If only I had known this. If only I had known that. If only I had known that you wouldn’t just stay in that hospital bed forever. That you were never going to talk again, that you weren’t just shy like I thought. That we would never get the chance to be close. I would’ve said so many things, given you so much to take with you out of this life.

Just this last Christmas, I received a present from Grandma. It was rectangular in shape and covered in tissue paper and a plastic grocery bag. It was a picture of you on your horse; an Appaloosa named Wapati. The other men in the picture on your team are all dressed in red coats with buttons, dark pants and cowboy hats. One man holds a flag, but everybody is looking down, I think to avoid the glare of the sun. Everyone except for you. You are looking up, like that sun is no match for you. Like it had better not dare to glare in your eyes. It was the first time I really got a good look at your face. I can’t quite see your eyes, but just by the way you hold your head I assume with no doubt that they’re filled with the intensity of a raging ocean, and the calm before the storm. The first rain after a long drought, and the first day of a good-for-berry-picking summer. Hardships and peace. Fire and ice. So many emotions were reflected in just one expression upon your face. You didn’t just have strength. You were strength.

That’s why I was certain that Alzheimer’s was nothing different than any other battle you had fought and won. 

How do I know so much about you without ever having really met you? I don’t know. I guess I see these things in myself. In my love of horses and big beautiful skies and being outside and huge open spaces filled with nothing but grass.

In being free.

So this is what I have to say to you: I’m glad you’re free, too. Free of the unbearable weight of disease and pain. Free to have your mind back and free to have no worries and free to have heaven. I love you so much; crying myself to sleep some nights, desperately grasping my tear stained pillow, I was always thinking about how you would have come to every horse show or rodeo of mine, coached my high school equestrian team and led my 4-h group. It makes me know that you were an amazing person.

I’m very excited to meet you someday. I hope that when you are looking down on me from heaven, wanting to tell me to sit up straight in the saddle and appreciate every little thing that mom does for me, that you are proud of me.

Love,
your Granddaughter,
Jamie, age 14