It’s been happening for decades but I think now it’s more common than ever. You were supposed to be filling them up with chocolate and sending them home hyped up with sassy “But Grandma let me” attitudes. You were supposed to have a house that smelled of freshly baked goods and show up at Christmas with a puppy (yes, my Grandma did that!). You were supposed to be Grandma, Mee-Maw, Mom Mom, Nana…but you’re Mom. Maybe not in name, no, but certainly in job description. You’ve got to tell her no to dessert if she didn’t eat dinner and he’s mad at you because you’re enforcing bedtime. It’s deja vu. You did this already and now you’re doing it all over again.

A grandma gets to be the 24/7 good guy and she also gets a break. She teaches her grandchildren to bake and paints birdhouses with them but then she gets to take a nap as soon as they hop in the car to go home.

But you, you’re getting a hip replacement and trying to do the math on how long before you can pick up the toddler you’re raising. You’re working all day and then coming home to cook a nutritional meal for a child. Or you’re spending your retirement doing this. You should have been planting gardens and traveling but instead you’re trying to find a babysitter you can trust so you can get a few hours free for the first time in months or years.

When we are parents, young and full of life, we feel like it’s our job to make them our world. Sure, we have our little lives but our big dreams, they come later. When our babies have families of their own, that’s when we can start focusing on ourselves. “I’ll get a break in 18 years”, we tell ourselves. And then “I’ll miss this”, we also say. But you, you didn’t get a break. You didn’t even get a chance to miss this. You’re on your second generation of diapers and homework.

As tired as I am today, trying to raise five children and constantly wondering if I’m making the right decisions for them, I think about you. There’s nothing I can say that will help you, that will take away the pain of losing your child to whatever you’ve lost them to. There’s nothing I can say that will truly ease the difficulty you face with being a late in life parent to your grandchildren. You know that you’re doing absolutely the right the thing but you’re running yourself so ragged, sometimes it’s hard to see.

You’re working tirelessly to bring up someone else’s child and I want you to know that you are amazing. You probably don’t feel like you had a choice. This child is your family and they deserve nothing less than the life you are providing so to you, there was never a question. Of course you will cast aside your plans to give them the world.

I wish I could help you, hug you, relieve you of some of this burden. I know, I know, you will immediately cringe at “burden” and tell me blessing and I won’t disagree. But I mean burden only in the sense that it is heavy. The weight of the responsibility and the emotion sit heavy upon your shoulders.

I just want to remind you how important you are. You don’t feel that you made a sacrifice because you are just doing your duty, but you did. You are pushing through knee pain and sheer exhaustion, sad thoughts about your child, fear about your grandchild, and you are doing your best to give that child the best life you can. You are amazing, strong, and appreciated, even when it doesn’t always feel like it.