Letter to my granddaughter (3)

Dear L……..,

As I look at a picture of you, I no longer see the little girl I remember, you are a young woman with  hopes and dreams. A young woman who has the rest of her life in front of her.
I am going to plant some sunflower seeds this week as I can think of the day you sat on the grass with your pot and seeds, carefully planting each one with a smile on your face as wide as the ocean.
Whilst I watch them grow and reach for the sky I will hold you close to my heart, somewhere you are under the same sky and the same sunshine.
As I look after your cousins, playing with them, painting and standing at the sink playing with water, just like I did with you, it has such bittersweet memories.
I close my eyes tight and can still see you standing there, looking up at me with big blue eyes, what I wouldn't give to recapture those moments.
I can still here your voice, calling as you ran in through the door, " Granny, granny," with such urgency.
Of course that was then, 7 long years ago.
I wonder what you are up to now, what you like doing what music you listen to?
It will be your birthday very soon, goodness me, where have those years gone.
All of us still carry on with our lives, and life continues, day turns into night and the seasons change as they always will,  but everyone here has a hole in their hearts where you used to be.
We have been doing some things with Esther Rantzen lately and she and myself have had letters and emails from children and young people who for lots of different reasons don't see their grandparents. Sitting and reading these words are so painful, there is so much hurt and pain leaping out from each page, some of them say, "Please help me."
There is one thing that they all say, "Do my grandparents know I still love them?"
If you have ever asked that question, and it breaks my heart to even think you might think that, L…….
We have never stopped loving you, we never will and we are always here for you.
So how can we help all these children and young adults, including you?
Whatever has happened in the past is just that the past, we all say things, do things that maybe we shouldn't have.
Somehow we have to be able to look at today and tomorrow and not look back.
The most important people in this is you and all the other millions of children and young people who are in the middle of all of this.
As I write this it is the beginning of another Bank Holiday and I expect the beginning of your half-term, I hope that whatever you are doing that the sun shines on you, the same sun that will be helping the sunflower seeds to grow strong and to produce those wonderful bright yellow happy flowers, just like yours did.
A bright light in this dark dawn, a star of hope and reconcilliation.
Darling, reach out for your dreams, dreams do come true.
With all my love, now and forever.
Gran.