After Grandma died, Grandpa lived alone, and I made the two-hour drive to visit him every Sunday. My cousins laughed at me, saying I was wasting my weekends. I never cared. Sometimes I brought coffee, sometimes I fixed things around his house, and sometimes I simply sat beside him and kept him company. Last winter, Grandpa passed away.
While cleaning his room, one of my cousins found an old diary and jokingly opened it. My heart sank when I saw the first page: “Sunday #1, my grandson came to visit today.” Page after page recorded every Sunday I had spent with him. At first, I wondered if Grandpa had been keeping score.
But beside every single entry were the same two shaky words: “Worth it.” Near the end, he explained that after Grandma died, Sundays were the hardest days because the house felt completely empty. My visits were the one thing that made him feel less alone, because they reminded him that someone still chose to show up.
Then I reached the final page. Grandpa had written one last message: “I left the house to you. Not because you came the most, but because you came when there was nothing to gain.” My cousins had laughed at all those Sundays, but Grandpa had remembered every one. In the end, I realized those two-hour drives had never been a waste—they were the greatest gift I could have given him, and the greatest gift he could have left me.