A/N: When we write, there's an element of ourselves that always gets written into our work; some more than others. (I guess you could call it historical fiction.) This is one of those times. I had three people in mind while writing this story – Julie (LaBellaShai27), her grandfather, and mine. Each chapter of this story will contain a short story about the relationship between a grandfather and grandchild from Secret Life. Each chapter will be titled a line from Faith Hill's "It Will Be Me." In this first chapter, each flashback is based partly on a true moment memory between my grandfather and I.

This story is dedicated to everyone who has lost a grandfather and to all those Grandpas lost. We love you and we miss you and we hope that, wherever you are, you miss us too.

Grandpa

When You Start Falling

"Who is this, Ames?"

Amy Juergens was seated on her grandfather's knee, examining the coin he held between his thumb and index finger. Her eyes lit up. "Santa Claus!"

"Yeah?" Robert Scott chuckled. "And who is this?" he asked again, before flipping the coin over to the other side.

Amy took one look at the other side of the quarter and bellowed, "George Washingmachine!"

Robert flipped the coin into the air and caught it in his palm. "Our First President," he nodded, unable to contain his amusement: "George Washingmachine!" He planted the custom coin into his granddaughter's hand. "Keep that safe now for me, alright?"

"A huh!" Amy nodded, closing both hands around the object as though it were sacred.

"You won't lose it, will you?"

"No!"

"You promise?"

"Pom-miss!"

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Amy slapped her eyes closed and scrunched up her nose, imitating the pretty blonde woman she'd seen on a Nick at Night marathon her mother had let her watch when she'd been up sick with a cold two weekends prior. She couldn't remember, but she thought her name was Jeannie.

"Oh, she's adorable! Isn't she adorable, Robert?" Mimsy asked as she coddled a very sleep Ashley, just barely three-years-old, to her chest.

"It's only with one eye, Ames," Robert chuckled. He proceeded to bend down to her eye level, cock his head again, and wink at her. A good natured dimple materialized as he closed his eye up. "See? That's a wink!"

"That's what I did, Grampa!" To prove her point, she shut her eyes again.

Robert tapped her on her tiny button nose. "Silly girl, you're shutting both eyes! That's a blink!"

Amy looked to her parents, who were seated at the end of the kitchen table, Anne on George's lap. Her mom was giggling and her dad was grinning from ear to ear. She felt her cheeks flush, not from embarrassment, but from the joy of the attention.

"Rob," Mimsy interrupted. "We've gotta get going." She flashed him her wrist which sported a dainty golden watch. "If we don't get down to the mall before they close, we're…" she surveyed the sleeping babe in her arms. "…never going to get to talk to Mr. Claus."

"Santa!" Amy yelped, her eyes widening to the size of silver dollars.

"That's right, Ames!" He picked her up and spun her around. "You wanna go with Mimsy and I see Santa yourself?"

"Dad," Anne groaned. "It's late, if you take them out now-"

"Come on, Anne…" George wriggled his eyebrows. "If your parents are willing to take Amy – or, you know, both girls even – who are we to protest them seeing Santa Claus?" He wrapped his hands around her waist. "We could use the time to…stuff a couple stockings."

"George!"

Mimsy snickered as she stood up. "Spit spot, then! I'll go grab the girls' coats!"

"I'll go warm up the car." He ruffled Amy's hair as he sat her back on the tile floor. "We'll work on that wink on the way!"

Amy contained her grin as she watched her grandparents leave the kitchen, whispering and smiling and holding hands as if they'd just started dating. After they'd descended the stairs into the den, she hurried out of the kitchen, out of the sight of her parents, and stood beside the stair railing with a grin on her face. Thinking carefully, she closed one eye and grinned.

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Amy lay stretched out on the stairs at her grandparents house, peering into the kitchen to watch her mother and Mimsy preparing the holiday ham. "I really, really, really want a kitty!" she begged, contorting her face into a pout.

"I know," Anne replied, exasperated. "That's the only thing on your Christmas List this year. Front and back. On all fifteen pages!"

"And don't forget the notes on the toilet seats," Mimsy smirked.

"Or in the shower."

"Or taped to Ashley."

"What?" Anne cast a dirty look over her shoulder.

"She didn't care," Amy replied unapologetically.

"It was on her back."

"Mimsy!" But before Anne could reply, the front door opened with a shuddering burst of November air. In a flash, something darted across the entrance and right up to Amy, as if it knew exactly where it needed to go. Amy shrieked, completely oblivious as Robert shuffled in a moment later. "Mommy, look! Look! It's a kitty!" The small cat nudged Amy's chin with her head and began to knead into her clothes as Amy smothered her with kisses and gentle scrubs. "Can we keep her?"

"Amy-"

"That cat was scratching at the door," Robert announced with a mock scowl on his face as he paused by the stairs. He avoided both eyes of the women in the kitchen and focused on the little girl at his feet. Continuing with his so-called voice of disapproval he added, "You'd better do something with it."

Amy rolled onto her back and cuddled the kitten against her chest as the feline's purrs grew in pitch. "I'm gonna name her Purr!"

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Amy bit off a chunk of her candy cane as she laid her head onto her grandfather's arm. They were reclined on his bed, propped up against a giant blue backrest pillow that Robert had had ever since she could remember. Her mom and little sister were at the edge of the bed, nibbling on Christmas tree shaped sugar cookies and the sweet sound of Faith Hill's "It Will Be Me" was billowing from the speakers as a family slideshow faded in and out on the television screen.

"Merry Christmas, Grandpa!" Amy exclaimed, echoing the words on the screen at the end of the slideshow. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Did you like it?"

Robert wrapped one arm around Amy's waist and hugged her to his chest. "It was perfect, Ames."

"I hepped too!" Ashley blurted out as she scampered out of her mother's lap and crawled up the bed to sit on her grandpa's lap. "I hepped too!"

Robert chortled and patted Ashley on the head. "I'm sure you did, baby girl." He pulled his granddaughters together and embraced them simultaneously. "I love you both so much, this was the best present a grandpa could ever get."

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She couldn't understand why her mother had pulled her out of bed in the middle of the night to make a road trip, especially on a school night. Even when she asked, over and over, why they were walking into the hospital, nobody would tell her a thing. All she knew was that her mother wouldn't stop crying and she'd never seen her like that before.

"Mom, what's going on? Why won't you tell us anything?"

"We shouldn't have brought them, George. I told you this was a bad idea! I don't want them to see him like-like…"

George wrapped his arms around Anne's shoulders. "It wouldn't be fair to keep them away, Anne."

"Why you crying, Mama?"

Amy clutched Ashley's hand. A crippling feeling was building in her stomach, like the moments before the first car crash she'd ever been in. "It's okay, Ashley," she whispered. "Mom's okay."

"Anne! George!"

"Mimsy!" Ashley bellowed, her sleepy eyes lighting up.

Amy shivered at the sight of Mimsy's fragile form, her eyes and cheeks shimmering in the harsh fluorescent hallway lights. "Where's Grandpa?"

At the mention, a levy seemed to break inside Mimsy and she fell into George's arms, inconsolable. Her trembling finger pointed to the end of the hallway, just beyond the information counter, to a room where the curtains had been pulled taut around the windows.

"Why don't you take the girls, Anne? I'll take care of Mimsy."

Amy wanted to protest, but held her tongue as her father ushered her grandmother back down the hall while Anne rounded up herself and Ashley, just feet from the door Mimsy had indicated. "Where's Grandpa?" she inquired again, the crippling feeling almost unbearable.

Anne knelt down, her eyes like a raccoon with smeared mascara. "Amy, Ashley…Grandpa's very sick right now…you might not want to-"

Amy released Ashley's hand. Her grandpa had always been there for her when she was sick and there was no way her mother was going to talk her out of seeing him. She vaguely heard Anne yelling as she darted around her, running for the door that she knew must be hiding something very horrible to make her parents and grandmother so distraught.

Even as one of the nurses bounded towards her, she pulled down the handle and shoved her way in. The air from her lungs seemed to vanish as she saw the single greatest man in her life high on a bed, with tubes extending from his mouth and nose, surrounded by the sick permeation of bleach. Somewhere beneath the wires and the tubes and the scarce hospital gown, was Grandpa Robert.

Somewhere.

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Three sleepless weeks later, Amy sat at a familiar chair beside her grandfather's hospital. She pulled something from her pocket and held it above his eyes, which were opened, though they seemed to stare at nothing. "Who is this, Grandpa?" When she received no response, she pointed animatedly towards the picture. "It's Santa Claus, don't you recognize him?" She pressed the coin into Robert's palm and curled his fingers around it. "I wrote him a letter this year. It's even longer than the one I wrote when I asked for Purr. I told him all I want for Christmas is my grandpa back. I told him…I told him I'd give up all my toys if you could just wake up."

"Amy?"

Amy swiveled her head around to see her father in the doorway. "I was telling Grandpa Robert what I want for Christmas."

George smiled sympathetically. "I brought Grandpa Robert his slideshow," he smiled, holding up a small disc case. He moved to the television at the foot of the bed, flicked it on, and slid the DVD into the player. A momentary black screen later, Faith Hill music began to flow from the speakers, followed by a collage of photographs on screen.

Amy slid her tiny hand over Robert's and used the other to point to the screen. A photograph of Amy, about two-years-old, standing in the kitchen wearing a brand new Christmas gift of a plastic shiny blue necklace and matching bracelet flashed on the screen. As the lyrics sang, "When you start falling, who's gonna catch ya," the photo faded into a photo of Amy in the same clothes in the same spot, except she was now sitting on the floor. As the words "I'm willing to bet ya, it will be me," played off, the image changed to one of Amy and Robert standing side by side, holding each other's hands while Amy held a heart shaped Valentine's Day balloon in her free hand.

"Look, Grandpa! That's us!" She turned her head, expecting to see Robert's blank face and as expected, it looked just like it had for the last three weeks. But to her surprise, a single tear expelled from his left eye and traveled down the side of his cheek. "Dad, look! Look, Dad!" she gasped, pointing to the fateful tear. "Grandpa Robert's crying!"

Amy lifted her hand to her cheek, wiping away the tear that had fled her eye the moment she'd found the small silver quarter, wrapped in a tissue, tucked in the depths of her sock drawer. She lifted the coin up, examining both sides in her hands, before she turned and walked over to her son's playpen. With a weak smile on her face, she held the coin up to her little boy and asked, "Who is this, John?"

John Juergens face lit up and he clasped his hands together excitedly. "Tanta Claus!"

Flipping the coin over she nodded, "And you don't know this yet, but this, this is George Washington. Can you say that, John? George Washington?"

John grabbed for the shiny coin. "W-W-Wash – Wash-"

Amy nodded eagerly. "Washington."

"Washingmachine!"

With a reminiscent giggle, the young mother scooped the boy out of the playpen and sat him on her knee. "Yeah," she whispered, kissing his head. "That's right. George Washingmachine." Then she leaned back and flicked open the jewelry box on her nightstand, where she extracted a wallet sized photograph and held it up for John to see. "And do you know who this is?"

Again, the little brunette grabbed for the picture.

Amy held it just beyond her son's reach. "This is your Great Grandpa Robert," she exhaled, her voice jittery.

"Gampa?"

"That's right, John. Grandpa. He was my Grandpa, like daddy's yours." Hugging her son close to her chest she whispered, "I wish he could've met you. I think you would've liked him a lot."