This is not something new to me...losing one's grandparents. I lost my first grandmother when I was 14 years old, another at 17 and my grandfather at 18.
What is new to me, is the feelings that are going along with it this time.
My Oma and Opa {both of whom I was very close to} passed away in the first 6 months of Matt and my dating. It was hard. It sucked. I still miss them.
Over the past 13 years that we've been together and since my own grandparents have passed away; Matt's grandparents became my surrogate grandparents. I've spent nearly the same amount of time with them, as I did my own grandparents.
It feels different this time, and I don't think it's because they "weren't my real grandparents". I kept mulling this over since Poppo died on January 12th...wondering why it felt different, why I wasn't as devastated by his passing as my own grandparents.
Then it hit me.
It's not that I'm not saddened by his passing; it is that his passing is at a very different time in my life.
My Oma died a month before my high school graduation, my Opa died a month after I began college...4 months apart. They had both been sick and were certainly in a better place, but I was not. I was young. I missed out on sharing some of the most important years of my life with my grandparents.
My Oma wasn't there with me and my mom picking out a wedding dress and getting ready. My Opa wasn't there to dance with me at my wedding. My Oma wasn't there to celebrate the long awaited birth of our daughter and my Opa wasn't there to fret and worry over how we would handle life with triplets {never mind that he himself was a twin}. So many of my major life moments my grandparents weren't there with me.
Matt's grandparents were. They watched us exchange our wedding vows. They joyously visited us in the hospital after the birth of our daughter and prayed without ceasing when they found out we were having triplets.
They were there for the "living" of life.
It is because of these things that I can rejoice in his life, knowing that he is with our Father, that he is no longer unwell. It is these memories that allow the sweetness of his living to linger on, despite the sadness of his passing.
It is in the knowing that he lived life, full of love and family, that he was able to see not only the births of all his grandchildren, but 6 great-grandchildren as well. It is realizing that we all must die, but that not all of us will have the gift of a well-lived life, and that those who have lived have been incredibly blessed!
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit."
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
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