She will know you

It's been four years, almost to the day, and I still remember the look on your face the last time I saw you. 

The family all gathered closely, like we have a tendency to do during times of great (and even small) importance. 

I held your hand for some time, listening to garbled blurbs and snippets of nursery rhymes that had long ago embedded themselves in your memory, searching for some kind of recognition.  

You smiled up at me and said "Hi, cutie!" before drifting back to incoherence........

As I type this, my heart beating solidly in my throat, I am thinking of my 4th child. 

My only daughter.  

The great-grandchild that will not have the memories of you that the other children have. 

My Leia.

She was born 1 yr and 5 days after you passed, Grandpa.  

She is amazing.  She is everything I never knew I was missing.

I wonder, if you'd have known her, would you have called her Rosebud like your father had called me?

Would you have looked at her and seen me in her eyes?  

Would you give her the gift of always knowing she was loved, the gift of a full heart in even the most troubling times, of a family that never gives up on her, and no matter what trespasses she committed would you always forgive her? 

I know the answers to my hypothetical questions. 

You were my Grandpa, and I did not know you as others may have. 

I only got the best of you, and so that is what I will give to my only daughter.

She will know you through pictures, and stories, and the dozens of corny jokes that I remember.

She will know that you were her Grandpa, and maybe someday, somewhere in the farthest reaches of the Universe, you will know her, too.