Farewell Grandpa Lee

On Sunday 1 March, Geoff's father passed away rather unexpectedly. After I received the news, I pondered as to how to tell the girls. Andrea may be too young to understand but Tasha should do. As expected, I had very different reactions from both....but not ones I expected.

When I told Tasha the news, she appeared distressed but only for a while. Then she started to talk about something else. When I tried to find out how she felt, she said she didn't want to talk about it. She chose to avoid the whole issue entirely. May be this is a way children protect themselves.

Andrea had a totally different reaction. I didn't expect her to understand at all but she surprised me. When I told her the news, her jaw dropped and her eyes popped. She stared at me for quite a few seconds. And then she asked if that meant that she will have no grandpa anymore (in the last few months she has followed Claire and started to called her Yeh Yeh and Mah Mah grandpa and grandma respectively). Now, she thinks "die" is a bad word.

It is sad that the girls are so young and won't remember much of their Yeh Yeh when they grow up. To help preserve whatever memories Tasha had of her Yeh Yeh, I asked her to write down whatever she remembered so she can share with Andrea when Andrea is older. She is very fond of her Yeh Yeh and had noted down some rather interesting memories.