Are Grandparents important?

How important are grandparents? By the time I was three, both grandmothers and one grandfather had passed away. Doctors diagnosed my remaining grandfather with manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder). Before the 1970s, he would receive shock treatments about every seven years and was on medication. My family never left me alone with him, and I only saw him periodically. 

Sometime before I was 8 years-old, I was talking to the older lady next door, and I asked her if she would be my grandmother and her husband would be my grandfather. She said yes and instantly became my unofficially adopted grandmother. She hired me to do yard work from time to time after that. They invited me over to eat watermelon with them on their picnic table under the tree in their backyard when they got one during the summer. By ten I was cutting the grass in their backyard and would go over to their house on Saturday nights to watch Kojak and the Sonny and Cher show. After seeing my friends react with their grandparents, I instinctively knew I was missing something important. My request embarrassed my parents, but it was one of the best requests I ever made. Grandma Hattie Brashier, who hailed from Hertford, NC, had thorough training in country cooking. Her collards were the best I had ever eaten. Grandpa Vernon Brashier was a veteran and was from Kentucky. He was an excellent storyteller. 

These folks gave me time and love over many years. Grandma Hattie had a stroke around when I was fourteen, and she passed away when I was sixteen. I was devastated. It was the first loss of that magnitude in my life. My actual grandfather passed away the following year. I was sad by his passing, but did not have the hole in my heart that I had with Grandma Hattie. I visited Grandpa Vernon from time to time, but I spent a lot of time away from home after getting my license at 16 and was often working on cars. While I was in Bible College, I visited Grandpa Vernon in the hospital (I was about 25 years old) when he was dying of cancer. He had been resistant to the gospel because of geological explanations claiming that different stratus levels of rock proved evolution, which disproved the Genesis record. When I shared the gospel with him, he was open and told my father that it seemed heaven opened when I read Romans 10 to him. I am not sure where he was spiritually when he passed away a few weeks later. But I am so grateful for this couple’s investment in me over so many years when I was just their next-door neighbor and not blood kin. I now know how much I needed them. Providence brought them into my life at an important stage and removed them at another specific time. I hope by God’s sovereign grace I will see them again in glory. God does all things well, and He is all-knowing, so I trust in His wise plan. Many people who invested in me over the years—both earlier and later in my life—have influenced the positive things I have accomplished. Grandparents are important, and good ones can do a lot of good.

Ted Manby