I held both of them while Daniel stood in the doorway wiping his eyes.
Three months later, I left the clinic.
I was doing better than anyone had expected.
Daniel had moved into the apartment next to mine while he worked through the changes in his family.
The children visited constantly.
And one evening, Lily climbed onto the chair beside me while we were looking through old family photographs.
She suddenly pointed at a picture of me holding Daniel when he was a little boy.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Were Daddy and I scared of you?”
I smiled sadly.
“For a little while.”
She wrapped both arms around me.
“I’m not scared anymore.”
That was when I finally understood something.
The morning my son told me to pack my things, I thought he was throwing me out of his life.
I thought illness had made me a burden.
I thought I was losing my family.
But Daniel hadn’t taken me away because he was ashamed of me.
He had taken me somewhere I could finally get help.
And the person who had spent months convincing me that my grandchildren needed protection from me…
had never been protecting them at all.
She had been teaching them fear.
My son simply decided that fear would no longer be allowed to live in our family.
