Never doubt that they remain with us,
the elders keeping watch,
time-traveling sentinels standing
guard, offering silent protection,
their heartstones testament to
their mission: keeping us safe.
That they occasionally make
appearances, shimmering into
physical form pleases us
when we behold them,
these temporal voyagers
who then vanish into mystery,
as we will do one day,
with luck, joining them
in their assignment of
cosmic caretaking.
Güd wrtr 
Your words echo thoughts that have for some time rattled around inside my head as I walked this beautiful place where I now live, once owned by my grandparents, my grandmother now gone 27 years, my grandfather 41. It comforts me to have it all confirmed, and I want to ask, “You, too?”
Would that I could engrave what you wrote into a stone monument and place it above the entryway to this house, whose bones are still good from the amazing craftsmanship of earlier family generations, now 76 years old and still standing, and where I almost daily happen upon something my grandmother or my father or my brother or my son last touched, left where they placed it, sometimes so apparent that it was done with deep and abiding love, a final act crossing the years and flooding me with emotion so achingly long after they left us.
They do, indeed, protect it all–except for our wistful hearts, that break a little each day, missing them.