Jenna Bush Hager has held onto advice given to her by her grandfather, the late former President George H.W. Bush, before he died. During an episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna on June 5, 2024, the cohosts were discussing an upcoming Hulu documentary about designer Diane von Furstenberg.
They talked about the importance of living, dealing with fear, and being surrounded by good people. Jenna then, on the verge of tears, recalled an empowering message her grandfather gave her before his death in 2018.
“It reminded me of this evening I spent with my grandpa and he could barely speak and I was sitting between him and he leaned over to me and he’s like, ‘Don’t forget to enjoy the game,’” she said. “And it was at the end of his life and at sort of the beginning of mine, relatively.”
“And to hear somebody that had done everything, be like, ‘Don’t forget to be in it,’ to enjoy it, to be part of it, I’ll never forget it,” she continued. “It’s kind of what I want to tell all of us.”
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She continued to explain that even through the busyness of life, it's important to take a step back from time to time and take the little things in. “In the middle of it’s hard, right? And there’s tedious moments, but I think what we got to do is that tediousness is the beauty.”
Jenna then reflected on when Hoda was showing her videos of her two daughters. “You could’ve thought, ‘Ugh, they have me up in the middle of the night again,’ but you were in it,” she said.
“You’re right," Hoda replied. "But what great advice from him because you always wonder at the end, what are you saying? After you lived a whole life, what are you saying at the very end. And that was it.”
Jenna also shared how her grandfather would write messages about how happy spending time with family made him. “He also wrote us the most beautiful letters when he was in his 70s, 80s, about being together, about how all he wanted was us to come home and that that was what brought him the most joy, was to be surrounded by his grandkids and his family,” she said.
Jenna has often opened up about heartwarming memories with her grandfather. In a 2020 episode of Today, she shared the rules George H.W. Bush lived by and the wisdom he shared with her. "He had this little list of rules that he lived by. They're all really good ones like, 'Don't talk all the time,'" she recalled. "'Listen to your mentors and friends and learn from them.' I actually have them memorized, which is kind of weird," she said.
"'Nobody likes an overbearing big shot," which sounds so much like his words,' she noted added. "'Help a friend when they're hurting.' One of them, which I obviously listen to a lot, is, 'It's OK to cry when life takes a bad turn or when a friend hurts.'"
