I recently had my grandson stay for a couple of nights during the school holidays, and as always, the house seemed changed by his presence. It felt fuller somehow — livelier, warmer, threaded through with movement, laughter, questions, and that particular energy young people carry with them so naturally. And then, almost as soon as he had arrived, it was time for him to leave.

I do not know what came over me, but as I hugged him goodbye, I felt myself suddenly grow terribly soft. I held onto him longer than I meant to, overcome by that quiet wave of emotion that can rise so unexpectedly in the middle of an ordinary moment. He was simply going home, and yet as I wrapped my arms around him, my heart ached as though I were trying to hold still something that refuses to be held still.

Perhaps it was because, in that moment, I could see two versions of him at once.

I could still see the little boy he had been, with his cheeky smile that always reached his eyes, his thick blond hair, and that endless energy and curiosity that seemed to spill out of him in every direction. And yet the one standing before me now was no longer that little boy. He was a young man, with a deepening voice and a height that has somehow carried him above me. There was something almost startling in it. How can this be? How can life move with such swiftness that one moment they are small enough to gather easily into your arms, and the next you are looking up at them, wondering where the years have gone?

I do not know who can make sense of this life and the speed at which it travels. I only know that love makes us feel it keenly. Love notices the changes. Love feels the passing of time. Love stands at the door after a simple goodbye and finds itself aching for what has not fully gone, and yet has already changed.

After he left, my thoughts drifted to my own grandmothers.

How rich my life has been because I knew them both.

They were each so different, shaped by different sorrows, different strengths, different ways of moving through the world, and yet both of them left something lasting in me. Even now, after all these years, I still feel the imprint of their lives upon mine. I miss them in that deep and quiet way we miss those who have become part of the inner fabric of us — no longer only remembered, but carried.

Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about something impossible: one more visit, one more conversation, one more afternoon tea around the kitchen table. I imagine the cups in our hands, the familiar comfort of their presence, the gift of hearing their voices once more. And always, when I let myself wander there, I realise the same thing: one afternoon would never be enough.

I would ask my Hilja-mummi if she baked pulla with her own grandmother when she was little. I would ask what it was like to give birth during wartime, to mother a child in the shadow of uncertainty, and how she found the strength to keep going through circumstances that must have required such courage. I would ask what it was like to move to Australia in her seventies, to leave behind what was familiar and begin again at an age when many hold tightly to what they know. And I would ask about her brain surgery, because now, in ways I could never have understood when I was younger, I recognise how much bravery can live quietly inside an ordinary woman.

I would ask my Elina-mummi more about the Kanneljärvi of her childhood — the place that remained alive in her long after it was gone. I would ask about her Christmas memories, and whether loneliness ever sat beside her after she became a young widow. I would ask if her heart broke when our family moved to Australia, and what it was that made her faith in God so unshakable, so deeply rooted that life itself could not loosen it.

And it is there, in the midst of all these imagined questions, that I realise something tender and extraordinary.

My grandmothers have passed, and yet they are still teaching me.

Hilja-mummi’s words still echo in my thoughts. The things she valued, the way she lived, the wisdom she carried so naturally, still speak into my life. And Elina-mummi’s love of beauty still resonates in my soul — her appreciation for music, art, and the lovely details of life. Her love of writing remains an inspiration to me, and her faith in God still stands before me as something deeply beautiful, something I continue to admire and aspire to.

The older I get, the more I see that a life well lived does not end when eyes close.

It continues in those who were loved by that life. It continues in the values handed down, in the beauty someone taught us to notice, in the faith we witnessed, in the words that remain, and in the quiet shaping of one generation by another. The deepest parts of a person do not vanish. They go on, living quietly in hearts, habits, memories, longings, and ways of seeing the world.

Perhaps that is why hugging my grandson goodbye touched me so deeply.

Because in that moment I was not only feeling how quickly he is growing. I was also feeling the long, sacred thread of generations — my grandmothers pouring into me, and I, in my own imperfect way, pouring into him. What they placed into my life did not end with me. It is still moving forward.

And that is my hope.

That my own life might one day speak into the lives of my grandchildren in the way my grandmothers’ lives have spoken into mine. Not loudly, and not in some grand way, but quietly, faithfully, and with love that lingers. That something of who I am might remain with them — in the way they see beauty, in the way they love, in the things they remember, in the faith they have seen lived out, and in the warmth of ordinary moments shared together.

That, perhaps, is one of the most beautiful things of all: that love, when it is deeply lived, does not end with one life. It keeps travelling on.