Grandpa Again!
Posted on July 3, 2013
Yesterday, my son and daughter in law welcomed the arrival of their second son, Daniel, and our fourth grandchild. Whenever I think about my eldest son Geoff being a father, I laugh to myself because I remember him vowing to never have children. The pride we feel when we see him with his first son is now doubled with the new arrival. It is also quite emotional for my wife and me, being able to hold a little one again and we can’t wait to spend time with the baby and his big brother.
I heard someone say that “Grandchildren are God’s reward for not having killed your kids!”, and I couldn’t agree more. Being a grandparent is SO much more fun than being a parent. You can abdicate all the responsibility to your children and just love those little ones unconditionally and not let anything get in the way. And the BEST thing about grandchildren is that they go home at night!! The three of ours tire us out, but it’s a really good tired – we enjoy every minute with the grandkids that we have, because we thought we might lose one of them very early on.
Our first grandchild, a granddaughter who is almost 12, has been through a lot – she is a cancer survivor, diagnosed at age 6 months with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, Stage III. After dealing with the emotional trauma of hearing that our first grandchild was seriously ill, my wife and I vowed that as long as she was with us, we would make sure that she would have as many happy life experiences as we could provide, no matter what it took to make that happen. We have taken her many places, and she counts a number of celebrities as personal friends – Tony Orlando, John Bauman (Bowzer), Kathy Lennon, Pat Benti – all of whom have befriended her through her association with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. She was even on a billboard on I-84 in Waterbury and on the sides of Connecticut Transit buses for a time as poster child for CCMC. She is a very, very special young lady.
We have been truly blessed, as our granddaughter was accepted into a clinical trial, and her cancer responded wonderfully. She was declared cured by her oncologist about 3 months ago, and outside of the occasional precautionary blood test, she is off medication and no longer in jeopardy. She is a wonderful child, happy, talented, intelligent and loving, and I cannot imagine what our life would be like without her. Her sister (aged 5) is very much like her in personality, although she has a more developed sense of whimsy than her older sister does. They both light up a room when they enter, and we look forward to seeing them as often as we can. Their cousin, aged 4, is a lot of fun in a different way – he is very much into sports already (as is his dad), and he is a real bundle of energy, going 100 miles per hour all the time!
I think wistfully back to my mom and dad, how proud they were to be great-grandparents, and how much they enjoyed the grandchildren before they passed. I’m sure they would have been overjoyed to welcome yet another addition to the family. Dad only got to meet the oldest before he passed, but Mom had the opportunity to spend time and love three of them.
The joy of being a grandparent doesn’t get old, but it still feels a little weird. After all, I’m too young to be a grandfather 4 times over! It really makes you think about the future, and we have high hopes for those little ones to have a healthy and happy life.
Nice Article!