Former First LadyBarbara Bushnever met her youngest great-grandson,3-month-old Hal, the son of former First DaughterJenna Bush Hager.
Even so, she was thinking of him — of all the great-grandchildren she would likely never meet — as she embroidered stockings to be “reserves” for the Bush children who grew up after shedied in April 2018.
Hager, 37, told PEOPLE about the heartfelt surprise of the stockings in a recent at-home interview as she returned to co-hostingtheTodayshowfollowing hermaternity leave. The happy, not-so-controlled chaos of her busy personal and professional lives follows ayear of loss in the family.
“I found out I was pregnant the week after my grandfather died, and I lost my three living grandparents in one year,” Hager says. Former PresidentGeorge H. W. Bushdied about six months after his wife, in November 2018. Hager’s maternal grandmother,Jenna Welch, died in May.
• For more on Hager’s life at home with three young children while juggling theTodayshow,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
LUKE FRAZZA/AFP/Getty
Jenna Bush Hager and her kids.Brian Doben
Hager says she knew her grandmother had been making some stockings, but “I didn’t know if there was enough for Hal.”
“She tirelessly worked,” Hager says. “And so my aunt just emailed me on Friday and said, ‘What address should I send Hal’s stocking to?’ ”
“What a beautiful blessing and what a beautiful thing that she did so that all three of my kids will have made,” Hager continues, “[Hal] will never met her, but they’re so ingrained, I mean, literally in this case, in the fabric of our family — that he’ll have a stocking that his great-grandmother sewed.” (Joking about her own lack of needlepoint skills, Hager says, “Maybe I’ll go on Amazon and buy one before I die.”)
The Bush family’s elder generation lives on in other ways, too.
Hager tells PEOPLE: “I know that through my grandparents letters and their stories and the way that they raised us, he’ll get to know them.”
source: people.com
