Hanley Valerie took to Facebook to share a story about a 73-year-old grandmother saved three abandoned grandkids in the 1960s.
In the 1960s, in Texas, three siblings: two sons and a daughter, and their mother were living with their grandmother. The kids were only five, four, and one.
One day, their mother decided she no longer wanted the responsibility and didn’t want the kids.
The judge granted the divorce, and it was in that moment that their grandmother stepped in instead of letting the three little ones go into foster care.
The grandmother was 73 years old, but she told the court she could raise them and keep a home together. Above all, she convinced and promised she would.
Their real parents were supposed to send money every month to help, but not a dime ever came.
Nonetheless, their grandmother didn’t let that stop her. To give the kids a quieter life, she packed everyone up and moved from the city in Texas to the country in Arkansas.
She worked hard, pinched every penny, and opened savings accounts for each grandchild so they’d have something to fall back on when they grew up.
Then one afternoon, the three kids’ grandmother walked into the bank to check on those accounts, but to her surprise, they were empty.
Later, it was found that the mother of the kids had somehow closed them out and taken every dollar. Back then, the rules were looser, and somehow she got away with it.
The money was gone forever, but Grandmother never said a harsh word about it in front of the kids.
The kids were too young to understand exactly what happened, but they knew something precious was gone.
Above all, the kids’ mother never showed up not once.
The mother missed her son’s football games, nor got to hear her elder son play. Likewise, the mother also never got to listen to her daughter’s piano recitals.
Above all, she wasn’t there when her daughter got married or when her two daughters were born.
The mother never held those little girls or heard them call anyone Grandma except the woman who actually earned the name.
For the three kids, their grandmother was everything to them, who lived to be 97.
When she passed, it felt like the world cracked open. They described the moment, writing:
losing her was the hardest day of my life.
Hanley Valerie
When she passed, the three grandchildren she raised buried her with a headstone that reads “Forever in our hearts,” because that’s exactly where she still is.
The kids described their grandmother as “She was our angel” and shared an old picture with the story, the last time all three grandchildren and their grandmother were together.
In the photo, the grandma was already in her nineties, smiling big even though she was frail.
The grandchildren shared that the love in that picture is the same love that has carried them every single day since, writing:
That was many years ago but her teachings and love last forever
Hanley
