Occasionally, among the letters I receive there is one that reflects deep disappointment and sorrow.  The writer had tried to contact a grandchild - or a grandparent - who was too faraway geographically or beyond a barrier of circumstance.  There were no answers. A man in his eighties wrote that he had a couple of dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren scattered around the world.  Not one had written to him or telephoned, either on their own or in response to his letters and gifts. He was a widower, lived alone, and was the only remaining grandparent.  He wanted his grandchildren to know that he was still alive.  He had much to offer them, he said, about the family's history and traditions.

'Should I just give up?' he asked. I suggested that he, as the only living grandparent, persevere and to not accept defeat.  Whatever the past might have been, his advanced years called for him to be nonjudgmental, empathic and healing.  I suggested that his grandchildren have or will have families of their own and, in time, they will also be grandparents.  As elders, they will reflect on their lives and, with a perspective vastly different from their youth and middle years, recall that Grandpa, in his advanced years, had tried to reach out to them as a grandparent in deeds as well as in name. In remembering, they would better understand their own roles as grandparents and their needs as elders.  Through their 'remembering' he will become the 'grandpa' he had sought, long before, to be. 

Persistence, I reminded him - not giving up - was vital to his well being if not to his life. To stop trying would be to accept defeat.  The aged do not take defeats lightly; at some point the accumulated effects accelerates their downward spiral. What he was doing for his grandchildren, I wrote, might have profound effects long after he was gone.  The 'grandparent' is both here and now and for the long haul, and he or she influences the grandchild across an entire life span, not merely for the few years that grandpa/ma was right there to offer guidance and hold the youngster close.
 
Grandchildren rarely realize it when they're kids - very often not even well into in their middle years - but the grandparents in their lives are forever. Most adults finally figure it out in their latter years.  In time, grandkids figure it out - in their turn.