Euroresidentes received the following response from a new friend in Mexico, to whom we send our greetings and to her grandparents who sound wonderful. We have translated her comments ….

‘Hello, I’m a Mexican woman and am nearly 23 with a son of 3 and another one on the way. I read this article (the one about coming to terms with age) and I thought it was very good. My grandparents are my greatest treasure. She is 81 and he is 91 and they live on their own in a village near the town and I admire them so much because of their worth as they are ageing. They are both well and don’t use glasses or a walking stick yet, and when I see them I feel so proud of them, even though I do feel scared about getting to their age, I’m sure it must be a difficult stage and I hope I have their worth and approach it with calm’.

…please don’t be scared! It can be difficult as you say, being old, and we have faced some of the problems in these articles. But it can also be rather wonderful providing that one accepts that a new way of living has to be found and celebrated, and the sense of regret, even grief that we can no longer function in the way we have lived most of our lives, can be endured.

The difference is more about challenge and new experiences than about loss.

If its good to have grandparents, its wonderful too to be one! An elderly cousin of ours sent us some pithy – and very American! -comments about being grandparents the other day which she had found on the web. Here are four of them.

‘Perfect love sometimes doesn’t come until the first grandchild’.
‘It’s amazing how grandparents seem so young once you become one’.
‘If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, I’d have had them first’.
‘A grandparent is old on the outside but young on the inside’.

There is something infinitely precious about having grandchildren and often there is a very special bond between them and us that defies the age differences. We cherish our three and we too have another on the way. We enjoy and celebrate the friendships we have with them whenever we see them and always when we think of them. They and their parents are so very important to us. Clearly, our Mexican correspondent feels the same way, but from the perspective of being a grandchild. Thank you for writing to us.

Bryan