Gifts in Life and in Death

23 years ago this morning, I learned that Christmas is not protected from tragedy when I suddenly lost my Grandfather. That morning has reverberated in my life every day since, and every Dec 23 I am reminded how much our family lost that day. I wish I could hear him say “Hello, Christopher” just one more time. I wish he had known my husband and my kids, I wish we could have talked about Africa.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve had to take care to remember him for who he was, quirks and all, and not romanticize who he was. Grandpa was very much unlike me in that he was early to bed, early to rise. To be accurate he was outrageously early to bed, exorbitantly early to rise. He was obsessive about his routines in general, but bedtime was his particular passion. Even in elementary school he was always in bed before I was. I still remember vividly how much we loved jumping in next to him and how it felt to be snuggled up, the electric blanket raging. I remember how his pyjamas smelled, and the sound of CFSL radio droning in the background. The last few months have been horrid for me for sleep, and I can’t help but laugh at how much I could benefit from some nights tucked in early like Grandpa.

Every December 23 is tinged with a little sadness before I can proceed with Christmas. My sister, cousins and I lost our innocence and our family lost an anchor. But the irony is, he and Grandma have still had an unexpected role in my life this year. When Grandma passed away, my Mom gifted us some funds from her inheritance, the money Grandma and Grandpa had scrimped and saved over the years. That money seemed sacred to me and I felt like it needed to buy something special, something significant. We bought a fireplace and the rest sat in savings for over a year. My Grandpa was a notorious saver, so every day it sat there made me feel like he would be proud.

When the opportunity came for us to go Malawi, I knew where I wanted the rest of that money to go. I have a memory of sitting on the couch in the TV room with Grandpa before church, watching a cheetah race after it’s prey in Africa on the Mutual of Omaha. It seemed surreal that even decades after his death, he and Grandma were involved in the process of getting us back to Africa. And I couldn’t help but marvel when the amount of our flights totalled the amount left, almost to the penny. What a gift. I wish I could have held their hands and told them what their money did, but I believe heaven will provide that opportunity.

On a related note, I got an early Christmas present yesterday in the form of a call from the Mposa ADP manager Dan. If you could wrap up exactly what I wanted for Christmas (with the exception of a plane ticket back to Malawi), it was that call. Despite the wild delay and the variations in volume, hearing his voice, talking about our sponsored child and what’s new in Mposa was the best present I could have received. It made my Christmas complete.

He also told me about some of the cool things being done with the funds we donated. As we mentioned at our fundraiser, after we knew we had enough money to cover the majority of our costs, we made a donation to Mposa with some of the proceeds. A few of the families that sponsored with us also contributed and yesterday Dan informed me just how far that money went.

First, it put a new roof on the CDCC preschool we visited. You might remember my blog last month after visiting a fantastic preschool program. With intermittent rains in Mposa, the roof was a huge concern and children were not attending school due to worries about safety. To my utter delight, the children are all back attending school again after that structure was given a new roof. I couldn’t be more thrilled!

And our beautiful sponsored girl Lozibe’s family got a wonderful gift as well. When we visited, the brick building her Grandmother toiled to build was strong and in very good shape. But the grass roof was tattered and full of holes. Little did I know when I took the above photo of her roof with Lozibe sitting beside me, that this roof’s days were numbered. Dan just visited their family and a metal roof was installed on their home too. We had no idea that our own child would benefit from this donation, and knowing our girl will be warm and dry makes me so very happy. So THANK YOU to everyone who donated to our fundraiser and who contributed to the gift notification for that community. What a gift the children of Mposa received from you this year – quality of life.

Before I wrap up, I want to thank everyone who read here this year – Merry Christmas to you all. Being able to share our love for Africa and start to tell the stories here keeps me sane. It gives me purpose. We are working on our video footage for the child visits, but I have so many more stories to tell about Malawi in the days to come. Much like in real life, I won’t be quieting down any time soon.

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23 Dec This entry was published on December 23, 2011 at 9:48 am. It’s filed under Christmas, Family, Malawi, Real Life and tagged Death, Gifts, Grandpa, Legacy, Malawi, Remembering. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.