An Emotional Week

This weekend, Carlos and I went to my parents' house to visit my family. While there, my grandma and I got to talking about her younger days when she was married and her past times overall.

Let me rewind... here's the story of my grandma:
My grandma married my grandpa when she was 19 years old and they had their only child (my mom) almost a year later. When my mother was only 7 years old, my grandfather died in an accident, leaving my grandmother a widow at the age of 27. {That's how old I am right now.} Back in those days, the most common form of long-distance communication was via mail, and since the last two months of my grandpa's life he spent alone in Meadows, Texas while working, my grandmother had been exchanging letters with him for those last two months. When he died, he had a letter for her in his jacket pocket that he was going to mail out to her that day -- and this is the last letter she has from him. These letters are some of the only things she has of my grandfather... her last memories of his words.

So once again, Sunday was the start of this emotional week for me. During our conversation about her marriage and about my grandfather, she informed me that she still had all those letters stored away in a keepsake box of letters and greeting cards from over the years. As you can imagine, I rushed over to where she had them stored, eager to see what my grandfather had written her. I gathered all the letters and ordered them chronologically so as to sort out the events leading up to the day he died. My goodness, my grandfather was such a romantic husband! He was sooo in love with my grandma and it showed! I couldn't help but let loose the tears as I read on and on... the hardest parts for me to read were the lines in which he stated he would be home soon and couldn't wait to continue his life with her and my mother, "Tell our daughter I will be home before Santa Claus comes." And then, I pulled up one letter I wasn't expecting to come across -- my grandmother's last letter to him that she never got to send off because he died a few days later. In this letter, she pleaded with him to come home and that they missed him so much. As I read this letter, my grandma saw me crying over it. She walked to her room and brought me a little old basket draped in satin cloth and opened it up. She withdrew a small sack of coins and said to me that she wanted to give this to me and Carlos for our wedding but she feels like my grandfather has been wanting her to go with him lately {a comment that I resented when she said it}. She handed me the very "arras" that my grandfather gave to her at their wedding ceremony as a symbol of his trust and confidence in her and his support for her and their marriage. Carlos and I will be using these for our wedding now, and I am so greatful my grandmother gave this to us. I hope she realizes how much we truly appreciate this.

Since then, I can't get that out of my mind, my grandmother's situation and how she lost her husband. I feel so blessed to be able to communicate with Carlos all day everyday, whenever I want. I realize that I should never take for granted the precious moments we have together. ♥