I Just Want You to Know_ Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family - Kate Gosselin [53]
Dear Katie,
Sure was good to hear from you. Keep on hanging in! We love you and know you’re going to be a real beautiful nurse.
Grandma has the kitchen all messed up by baking pies. She says there’s a small grape pie for us two. The others go to our pastors.
When you are here we can talk about your need for whatever you need prior to your operation [tonsillectomy].
We love you,
G’pa & G’ma
Dear Katie,
We really appreciate your letters. You are more important in our lives than you seem to think. We have so many happy memories of you and your siblings. We treasure them all. You were an important part of family during all those growing up years.
Grandpa
Thank you for the love letter! We love you too.
G’ma
This is one of many sentimental letters from my grandpa. I cherish each one.
As you have already noticed, I’m partial to love letters. Maybe it’s because letters are a lasting form of communication. Or maybe it’s because you know the writer spent quite a bit of time thinking about the recipient. All I know is how much letters have meant to me throughout my life.
One of my favorite chapters in the Bible was actually first written as a letter, but it is more commonly referred to as the “Love chapter.” In fact, I got Hannah, Leah, and Alexis’ middle names from this chapter.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:4–13
Grandpa struggled with congestive heart failure following a heart attack while I was pregnant with the six. His weakened heart took him from me in the end, but I know his love for me remains.
After Grandpa died in June 2005, we knew it wouldn’t be long for Grandma. They had been married sixty-five years, and they loved each other fiercely. Theirs was an amazing and rare love story right up until the very end, when Grandma cried, “I just want to go be with Grandpa.”
One Saturday evening in September 2006, my sister-in-law came over to babysit the little kids, so the girls, Jon, and I could go to Lancaster General Hospital to visit Grandma. On our way we made a wrong turn—and then another one. We drove around Lancaster for about an hour.
Frustrated from what it took to get there, we rushed in to find out visiting hours had just ended. Determined to visit regardless, we walked in to find Grandma pulling out her IV. She looked up, and with recognition on her face, she said, “I haven’t seen you and Jon in years!” We didn’t have the heart to tell her we just saw her the previous week. As the nurse was putting her IV back in, Grandma remarked that she had never been so embarrassed in her life. Then in the next breath, she turned to her nurse: “Did I do that?”
It hurt to see Grandma like that.
“How are you, Cara and Mady?” I was so happy she recognized the girls! They would have been heartbroken if she didn’t. I doubt she remembered we had six others, as she didn’t say her famous line: “You always wanted a little brother and he broke into six little pieces.”
I held her hand once the nurse left, the IV back in place. I wanted our deep loving relationship to go on forever, but as I sat there with her, I realized it couldn’t. “Grandma, I love you,” I said, “and even though I’ll miss you, it’s okay if you want to go home to be with Grandpa. I don’t want to be selfish anymore.”
“I always liked you the best!” Grandma replied.
This was not the Grandma I knew. She would have never shown favoritism. It was so hard not to see her