I have just booked a whistle-stop journey to see my Oma in Germany for her 90th birthday. I’ll catch the first flight out in the morning and the last one back in the evening. I won’t have time to visit her home, just the place she now resides in – a home.
The days of us visiting our grandparents, splashing in the pool in the back garden of the home they built themselves, lounging in the sun, playing games with them, eating cake and learning about life from them, are now gone and it is only in this past year, since my Opa died, that I’m finally beginning to realise that.
I am so unbelievably blessed that I have had two grandparents who could not have been better role models for me. Every fibre in their being was love and faith. They exuded wisdom, they laughed from their heart and they demonstrated the kind of devotion to one another and to God that is so hard to emulate.
Dementia now has much of the mind of my Oma, but her heart is still the same. She misses her partner of over 60 years but she is still wise, she still has faith and she still loves with every ounce she has left.
But those carefree days of my childhood with them truly are gone and that makes me sad. I wouldn’t say I didn’t make the most of them because for most of that time I was too young to know the blessing I had, but they made sure that they cherished their time with me and my sister and in doing so, they gave me memories that can never be taken from me.
I am one fortunate girl to have those memories and, though I’m sad to comprehend that they will never be experienced again, I am grateful that I had the opportunity to experience them at all. I will continue to make new, albeit different, memories with my Oma for as long as I get to keep her on this earth. She is one very precious lady.
Dandelion Showers 