Dear Grandparenting: Ramona, my granddaughter, is gone but not forgotten. She moved in after her father remarried when things got tense between Ramona and her stepmother.

Ramona wanted a red room so that’s what she got. Red walls with white trim and a white ceiling, bed sheets with red stripes, pillowcases with red polka dots, red bath towels, you name it. She must have told me 10,000 times how she loved that bedroom.

I figured I would reclaim the red room after Ramona enlisted in the Army to work for Uncle Sam. But here it is five months later, and I haven’t touched a thing. When I sit in the rocker by the red room window on sunny days, I just feel better somehow.

I am of two minds about the room. I like the memories it brings back. But I don’t want Ramona thinking that I’m leaving her bedroom as she left it because I’m waiting around for her return, plus the fact that the room would make for a comfy upstairs den and library. Thank you for your attention. What’s your advice to this grandmother in limbo? Selma Bowen, Charleston, South Carolina

Dear Selma: Yours is a good question for our times, as evermore grandparents take in grandchildren beset by family discord and economic uncertainty. What’s the best thing to do with that old bedroom?

An untouched bedroom exists in a state of suspended animation, unchanging as if time stands still. Emotionally comforting perhaps, but so yesterday. Change is the only constant. Why not get up to speed and enjoy your granddaughter’s adventures in the here and now?

Your granddaughter is growing up fast, changing to meet the challenges of life in America’s military. Instead of fixating on the little girl that was, celebrate the modern woman she has become. That comfy upstairs den and library sure sounds good to us.

GRAND REMARK OF THE WEEK

Grammy Beck, of The Villages, Florida, reports that she ordered T-shirts for her twin granddaughters with this customized message on the front in capital letters:

“Grammy says when God made me he was just showing off!”