Last Monday morning, my Grandpa died. This Monday morning, I checked my mail and saw a letter from my Grandpa, postmarked the day he died.

You see, every year my Grandpa liked to give each of the 12 grandkids a Christmas card with our names written on the front of it and some cash in it, and this year was no exception. He was just so sick over the holidays that it happened late this year, but he had been bugging my Mom to help make it happen for weeks (buy the cards & address the envelopes since he was wheelchair bound and so weak at the end that he couldn’t do it on his own), and my Mom had just dropped them all in the mail for him on the Saturday before he died. She brought them by his place on Friday so that he could write on them all, but he told her he just didn’t think he could do it this year and asked that she write our names instead. Unbeknownst to him, she also included a brightly colored note card and a self-addressed stamped envelope so that we could easily send a thank you note to him that could be pinned on the wall by his bed. The email from my Mom warned, “You do not want to be the slacker grandkid who did not get their card mailed back!!” LOL

Today I saw that envelope in the mailbox, and it just made me so, so sad that he didn’t get to see those thank you notes pinned all over the wall for him to read. That being said, I know he is reading this, so thank you, Grandpa. I am so thankful we got to see you so many times over Christmas and that I have no regrets about making that time to see you. I love you to the moon & back.

This was written on a letter my Grandpa had sent to his big sister and her husband a few years back. She saves everything (and that’s a lot of stuff – she’s 93!) and showed it to my Mom and I on Saturday when we stopped by to see her before I flew home. It was nice to see his handwriting on something again, especially when it was this old Norwegian farmer telling his big sister that he loved her. <3