My Grandson Called Me the Worst Grandma Alive… (2 of 3)

Eight years passed. Eight long years of silence. I learned to live with the ache, though it never truly faded.

And then, one rainy evening, there was a knock at my door.

I opened it, and there he was. My grandson — no longer a boy, but a young man. His hair was longer, his shoulders broader, his eyes heavy with something I couldn’t name. But what shook me most wasn’t how much he’d grown. It was the way he fell to his knees right there on my porch.

“Grandma…” His voice cracked, choked by tears. “I’m so sorry.”

I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Neighbors could probably see, but I didn’t care. Here was the same boy who once spat cruelty at me, now broken, begging forgiveness at my feet.

I should have felt relief. Joy. Maybe even vindication. But instead, a fire lit inside me. Because where was this remorse when I sat alone on my birthdays? Where was this guilt when I was praying he would remember I existed?

“Do you know what it felt like?” I asked him. “To hear those words from my own grandson? To carry them in my heart for nearly a decade while you pretended I didn’t exist?”

He sobbed, shaking his head, mumbling excuses I could barely hear. Something about mistakes, about being young and stupid.

But nothing — nothing — can erase eight years of silence. Nothing can give me back the holidays spent staring at an empty chair.

I don’t know what people expect from me. That I should have opened my arms and welcomed him back instantly, as though nothing happened? Maybe that’s what some grandmothers would do. But I am not one of them.

Because when someone you love calls you “the worst,” and then disappears, the wound never really closes. Even when they come back on their knees, it still bleeds.