Hi Pam,

What a lovely way to honour your son. You do get smaller guitars though. The Taylor GS Mini is a really neat little steel strung guitar that sounds great (probably about 450 USD). Alternatively you could get an electric guitar which would be smaller and easier to handle than most acoustic guitars. You could learn on a smaller guitar and play your son's guitar when you felt like you wanted to.

Nylon is probably easier on the fingers but in my opinion much of the stuff taught on GT (e.g. blues, rock) is better suited to steel strung guitars.

Istvan