Presidential library Robin Bush
Jenna Bush Hager, the granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, shared a cartoon that showed her grandfather entering heaven and being met by his wife, Barbara, and their daughter, Robin, who died when she was a toddler of leukemia.
Along with the cartoon, Jenna, the daughter of former President George W. Bush, wrote a moving comment in which she shared her grandfather’s perceptions of the afterlife. George H.W. Bush died at the age of 94 on November 30, 2018. Jenna shared the cartoon on Facebook.
Here’s what you need to know:
Jenna Bush Says Her Grandpa Wasn’t Afraid of Death Because He wanted to See Robin Again
Jenna Bush shared a conversation she had with her grandfather about death in the caption she wrote along with the shared cartoon. This is what Jenna wrote:
This brought me such comfort this morning. I had the opportunity to talk with my grandpa about the afterlife. This is what he said: He answered without any hesitation. ‘Yes, I think about it. I used to be afraid. I used to be scared of dying. I used to worry about death. But now in some ways I look forward to it.’ And I started crying. I managed to choke out, ‘Well, why? What do you look forward to?’ And he said,’“Well, when I die, I’m going to be reunited with these people that I’ve lost.’ And I asked who he hoped to see. He replied, I hope I see Robin, and I hope I see my mom. I haven’t yet figured it out if it will be Robin as the three year old that she was, this kind of chubby, vivacious child or if she’ll come as a middle-aged woman, an older woman. And then he said, ‘I hope she’s the three-year-old.’ Robin was the daughter this giant of a man lost years before to leukemia. The little girl he held tightly: who spoke the phrase I have heard Gampy repeat for my entire life, forever knitting Robin’s voice into the tightly woven fabric of our family: ‘I love you more than tongue can tell.’
Jenna also called her grandfather a “giant of a man who gave me everything” in a post on Instagram.
The Washington Post gave the background on the viral cartoon. It was created by Marshall Ramsey, of the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. He thought of the idea immediately when his wife told him that George Bush had died, according to The Post.
Ramsey created a similar cartoon when Barbara Bush died.
President Bush once wrote a letter about Robin Bush. “[I like] to think of Robin as though she were a part, a living part, of our vital and energetic and wonderful family of men and Bar[bara],” Bush wrote to his mother in 1958. “…We need a girl. We had one once — she’d fight and cry and play and make her way just like the rest. But there was about her a certain softness. She was patient — her hugs were just a little less wiggly …”