A Letter to My Grandchildren: What I Want You to Know

Editor's note: The following letter was written by Margaret, 79, a grandmother of four who lives in Oregon. She wrote it after completing a recording session with her daughter as part of the Heirloom program. She gave permission to share it because, she said, she hoped it might encourage other grandparents to write their own. Names have been changed.

My dear grandchildren — those I know, and those who may not yet be born —

I am writing this in the spring, in my house that has always smelled like coffee and books and, on certain evenings when the window is open, like the garden where I have spent the best hours of my later life. I am seventy-nine years old and I am well, for now, and I want you to have these words before the circumstance arises that makes you wish you had them.

I want you to know that I was afraid sometimes — most of the time, actually, in the ways that matter. Afraid of failing, afraid of being too much and not enough simultaneously, afraid of the loneliness that ambushed me in middle age when I least expected it. I was brave, too, in ways that surprised me. I think that is the truth of most lives: we are braver than we knew we were capable of being, and more frightened than we show.

I want you to know that the things I worried most about either never happened or were survivable. And the things that actually hurt — the unexpected losses, the relationships that ended, the moments when the world revealed its indifference — I survived those too, in ways that changed me but did not break me. This is the thing I most want you to know: you are more durable than you believe. The evidence for this is every person who came before you who survived what seemed unsurvivable, and still showed up at the table for dinner.

Love the people in front of you. Tell them so. The words are not as hard to say as you think, and not saying them is a regret I know something about.

I love you. All of you. Including the ones I haven't met yet.

— Your grandmother