A Love that Carries on Forever
By Jessica Brodie
On the very day Queen Elizabeth II died, our family experienced a tragedy of its own—the passing of Grandpa Gene, my husband’s step-grandfather. Gene, at 101 years old, was the oldest person I think any of us had ever known, and one of the most beloved.
His passing is still too raw for me to really write about. There was just … something … about Gene, something in his soul I connected with on an incredibly profound level. I loved him so much. He was brilliant, kind, and he seemed to shine with the light of Christ. He had a way of looking into my eyes as if he saw my actual, timeless, eternal soul.
In the span of eight weeks, my husband has now lost both of his grandfathers. They were his step-grandfathers in title, but grandfathers still.
There’s something incredibly surreal about the passing of an entire generation of people. On my husband’s side this hasn’t happened yet—I write this on the very day his Grandma Mary celebrates her 99th birthday. What a woman! But in my family, it has. Both sets of my grandparents are now in their heavenly home, no longer here on earth.
We all go through this in our lives, and my husband and I are now in our 40s. It shouldn’t be a surprise as loved ones grow old and pass away. And yet, deep down I’m still convinced I’m a 19-year-old kid and somehow one day I’ll be outed as a fraud because I’m not an actual “real adult.” In my family, I can so easily remember yesterday, when I was 6 years old and we were gathered at Grandma’s house. My parents were still married back then, my sister just a toddler. My great-grandmother, Bubba, was sitting in her rocking chair, smiling and kind of out-of-it but happy nevertheless. Grandpa and Grandma were there, and my aunt and uncles and cousin Vikki. Someone brought up politics like always, and all around me swirled barbed debate and the clink of glasses… the sounds of joy, of family.
Soon Bubba passed away and my parents divorced and remarried. Grandpa passed away, Grandma moved in with Mom, and then she, too, passed away. Next came my dad’s passing and my aunt’s, and most recently my stepmom’s. Only a handful of us are left now, and times are so different. But when I look back, it still feels like yesterday. I still feel like that same little kid looking around at the grownups, thinking it will never change. That’s how things were and always would be—period, the end.
We all know that’s just a little kid’s fantasy, but some of us still believe it on some levels. We get so shocked when things change and people die. We consider our own mortality, say things like, “Life is so short.”
Grandpa Gene‘s passing hurts. I miss him, and I know I’m never going to get to have a good conversation with him again this side of heaven. It’s also the end of an era, a time in life we’ll never get back.
The truth is none of us are guaranteed what we’ve come to somehow expect as a “normal existence,” where everybody lives a good, long life, no one gets a terminal disease, and kids never die before their parents. It just doesn’t work that way. And honestly it never really has, has it? Suffering is a given. Bad things do happen. And, no matter how long someone we love lives, it always feels as if their years have been cut short and we want just a little more time.
We live in a broken world. But it’s also such a gift. We’re given people around us to love and cherish. Sometimes they’re the people we’re related to, and what a blessing that is. Other times they are the families we make from our friendships.
God tells us to keep our eyes on heaven, to keep a foot in this world yes, but to keep our focus on the eternal. What we experience in this life is just a blip on the radar, a pale shadow of eternity.
Eternity doesn’t end. And the love we build during these earthly lives carries on forever for those of us who believe in Jesus. As we’re promised in scripture, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV).
One day, we’ll see Gene again… and my Grandma, and Grandpa Bob, and my dad and Aunt Marsha, and everyone I loved who’s passed away. It hurts now. The memories are all I have left, for now.
But as the apostle Paul writes, the “light momentary affliction” I experience now is nothing considering the “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Today, hug your loved ones extra tight. And remember: those hugs, that love, those are the things that matter. The other stuff will pass away, but that love? It lasts for always.
Praise Jesus.
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THANKS TO MY SPONSOR: MATT BRODIE.
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