College Granddaughters’ Memories and Emotions Related to Their Relationships With Their Deceased Grandfathers

The main question addressed in this exploratory study was the following: What is the content of college females’ journals about their deceased grandfathers? The method involved 35 undergraduate females keeping journals about their feelings toward their deceased maternal or paternal grandfathers for one semester. Their journal entries were open-ended in order to explore an under-utilized qualitative and narrative-based approach to studying granddaughter–grandfather relationships, from the granddaughters’ perspectives. The results demonstrated that the maternal grandfathers were the most frequently written about. In addition, the journals revealed differences in content depending on how old the granddaughters were when their grandfathers died, and various forms of sadness were expressed in over 50% of the entries. It was concluded that additional developmental research is needed on the impact of having deceased grandfathers on granddaughters’ and grandsons’ memories and emotions.