Slamming the back door behind us, we splashed through the puddles to the van. Running late, I thought to myself. Half-dragging my five-year-old granddaughter Amilyn by the hand, I slid the side door open and lifted her onto the booster seat. “Buckle up, we’re late!” I said impatiently, as I slammed the door and ran around through the soaking rain to the driver’s side.
Starting down the driveway, I glanced at her as always in the rear-view mirror. I could see her sweet face and beautiful red hair. But this gloomy afternoon, her eyes were wide and serious.
“Baga, why are you grumpy?”
My granddaughter has always called me “Baga” since she was little, because she couldn’t pronounce Grandma. It stuck, and I love it.
After a long pause, I told her I didn’t know why I was grumpy.
“Baga, are you sad?”
The words hit me like a slap, and tears swelled. Was I sad? That was the understatement of the year! Four days until Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving we would have without my dad since he passed away unexpectedly in March. My mom, stepdad, and stepmom were having health problems. I had lost my teacher’s aide job of many years, and missed my students. This would be the third holiday season with our adopted daughter not speaking to my husband and me. And for eleven months I’d been watching my best friend of over thirty years, Diane, suffer with terminal cancer, knowing now she was nearing the end of her struggle.
Was I sad?
“Yes, honey, Baga is sad.”
“Why, Baga?”
“Because, honey, my friend is really sick.”
“Why is she sick?”
“I don’t know, Ami. Sometimes people just get sick.”
“Then do they die?”
“Yes…sometimes if they don’t get better, they die and go to heaven.”
“Like your Daddy?”
A punch in the gut, to go with my slap in the face.
“Yes, like my Daddy. We know he’s up in heaven with God. Because he believes in Jesus.”
We had talked about this before. She was quiet for a moment, and then I heard her give a little gasp. It startled me, and I said, “What?!”
When I looked in the mirror, her mouth was in the shape of a little “o.”
“Your friend will get to see your Daddy, when she goes to heaven!”
I had thought about this many times before, but to hear it with her sweet voice, with her simple faith, made heaven seem more real and close to me than it ever had in my life.
“Yes, honey, she will.”
She definitely will.
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2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
aLittleGoodMuse 