Hole

 

"GrandmaKath... you fill a hole inside my heart."

Oh, littlebear.  You have it backwards!  You fill a hole inside MY heart!  A cavernous hole!  A real gap!  A lonely pit.  And you, your letter today, your hugs on other days, your texts and calls on still other days, cushions the hole in my heart.

You don't even know yet, about a hole, about how a heart gets ripped into a bottomless hole.  Your few young years expose you to words, and the occurrence, and a little of the sad.  But thankfully not the tear.  Thankfully not the hole itself.   

On the other hand, even littlebears experience heart-holes.  When a best friend moves away, when a mommy or daddy say unkind words, when a grandpa... dies.  These things muddle littlebears. Their hearts feel quivered, bruised, gloomed.  They can't really talk about it.  They don't know how to talk about it.  But a littlebear heart-hole is real too. 

So, if I can fill a hole in your heart, oh... let me fill it!  Let me smile up, happy up, laughter up your heart.  Because that fills mine too.

Someday you will know the fill you were and will always be to the hole in my heart.  Someday you'll know that this grandma was in great need, and you were what she needed.  You filled a hole.