By CHRISTOPHER DE VINCK Jan. 7, 2015 6:55 p.m. ET 39 COMMENTS The new year is my 63rd, and with age I have come to understand that no matter how hard I try to hold on to the past, the images fade and will, eventually, disappear. When I was a boy my Belgian grandmother visited our home in Allendale, N.J., nearly every summer. She brought Belgian chocolates, her felt hat and thick-heeled shoes. We played cards, sang French songs and sat in the yard together. She came to my college graduation and later pushed my son in a carriage. Thirty years ago my parents and I helped her into a wheelchair and kissed her goodbye at Newark airport. The thoughtful airline worker who took hold of the chair kindly turned it around and pulled my grandmother backward toward two wide doors. The doors opened automatically. My grandmother sat in the wheelchair with her felt hat and she waved goodbye. I never saw her again. Her worn heart gave out and she died that winter. When my daughter Kare