We thought it would be a sweet surprise. My son brought a drawing, ready to say, “I missed you, Grandma.” But when she saw him, she frowned: “My grandson is five. You can’t be him.”
He froze, crushed. Later, through tears, he asked, “Why doesn’t she know me?”
He refused to give up. He drew pictures, collected keepsakes, and brought them in a shoebox. When Grandma held a toy car she’d once given him, her eyes softened. “Daniel… you’ve grown.”
From then on, he visited not expecting her to remember, but determined to remind her. Sometimes she knew him, sometimes she didn’t. But love found its way through.
One day she asked for him by name: “Bring me my Daniel, the one who makes the drawings.”
That’s when I realized—love isn’t erased by memory loss. It’s kept alive by showing up, again and again.
