My Sister's Keeper     | page 1 of 6 | next>

by Lynne Hybels

It’s Thursday and I am four hours from home at my daughter, Shauna’s, house. I sit at my computer with my four-month-old grandson, Henry, on my lap.  While he grabs at the keypad I search the web for the most recent updates on the situation in Darfur.  I find only bad news: escalated violence has led to another major withdrawal of international aid workers and supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of refugees without food, water, blankets.  Online I sign a letter to our president, asking for increased pressure on the Sudanese government and greater support for peacekeepers trying to quell the violence and protect civilians.  I also send a check to an aid organization still trying to get supplies to the desperate refugees.

Then I play with Henry.  I don’t have words to describe the pleasure of being a grandmother.  I contort my face, stick out my tongue, gurgle and chirp and giggle and grunt, all in the name of entertaining Henry.  Today I prop him up in a corner of the sofa and surround him with all his soft, squishy animal toys.  He’s tired and hungry, needing his mom to come home soon.  To distract him from his hunger, I make his animals talk and sing and dance and bounce up and down in front of him.  He looks adorable surrounded by his critter toys, so I grab my camera.  Click, click.  Henry, look at Grandma.  Click, click.  The photo becomes the screen saver on my computer, so even now as I write, Henry’s head peeks above my Word document.  I smile.  It’s a disease called grandma madness. 

Grandmothers in Africa face a different disease.  A disease that drags their sons and daughters down into an ugly, painful death.  The “wasting away disease” they used to call it.  Now they call it AIDS.  These grandmothers don’t have time to entertain their hungry grandchildren with silly faces and chirps and giggles while they wait for the mothers to come home. The mothers aren’t coming home.  Thirteen million kids in sub-Saharan Africa have been orphaned by AIDS; approximately half live in grandmother-headed households.  The grannies, as they’re called, may take in two kids, they may take in twenty.  The children may actually be the offspring of their sons or daughters, or they may just be kids in need.  Either way, the noble grannies don’t have time to play with the children they’re raising.  They’re too busy collecting firewood to trade for food or crushing stones in a quarry in order to pay for school uniforms.  Having already buried their sons and daughters, these grannies pray they won’t have to bury another generation, but often they do.  They meet in support groups to share stories, to make beaded jewelry and knitted crafts to sell in the market, to learn how to protect themselves from HIV as they care for the sick, and to grieve. 

My fairytale life as a grandmother is haunted by memories of the grannies I’ve met in Africa.  They watch me silently as I put a clean new diaper on Henry’s chubby bottom.  They smile shyly when my silly antics elicit a babyish laugh.  They bury calloused fingers in the tangle of fuzzy sleepers fresh from the dryer.  They don’t accuse; they simply make sure I don’t forget them. 

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