Gram

It’s been 92 days since you were taken from us. And every one of those days I have thought about you and missed you terribly. And on most of those days I have cried. I still can’t believe that you’re gone. Or maybe I can believe it but I don’t want to. I have your funeral card where I can see it every morning and every time I do my heart stops for a second from the shock that you’re not here. Three months later and I still feel shock every time I see a picture of you. I wonder sometimes if that will ever stop, I’m not sure it will. My head and my heart are in constant battle with each other. My heart tries to be kind and gets me to just think of you being at your house, like always. But my head is the cruel truth and it makes reality sink in faster than I want it to. I want to live in those fantasy moments just a little bit longer before I let you go again.

I knew that losing you would be hard. But I didn’t think it would be this hard. This gut wrenching, hit by a train feeling, hardest think I have ever gone through in my life. But here I am, crushed the same as I was 92 days ago. Maybe even more. When you passed and I told my friends, their responses were the same, ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much she meant to you’, ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much you loved her’. And it made me feel good to know that people knew what you meant to me. I told others how much I adored you. But then regret set in as I wondered ‘did I ever tell you?’. I don’t think I ever did. I’m sure you know that I love you, I said it every time I saw you or spoke to you on the phone. I showed you every time I came for a visit or stopped by for a quick hello on my way to somewhere else. But I don’t think that you really know that you are the most amazing woman in my life. And I won’t put that into past tense because every day until forever you always will be the most amazing woman in my life. And I will always keep you here in the present, in this moment, until my last day, because I don’t think I’ll ever find a way to let you go completely. And I don’t think I will ever want to.

So, I now live with this sense of regret and sadness that I never told you everything I wanted to. And maybe writing it down will be therapeutic for me and at least help a little. And maybe you’ll see these words and you will know.

As a kid I thought you were invincible. You were there the day I was born, and you were there every day of my life for almost 43 years. That’s amazing to me and I know I am one of the luckiest people in the world. Only my sister is luckier for being the oldest grandchild and having you in her life for an extra two years. Obviously I know that death is a part of life, the worst part, but I know it’s inevitable. But as a kid I never thought about it. I had my family, this large, incredible family with you at the heart of it all and I never thought that would change. As the years went by and I went through my teens, my twenties, thirties and the start of my forties, you were there and I think I convinced myself that you weren’t going anywhere. I couldn’t comprehend what that would even be like, what that would feel like. Not having you in this life was a problem I would never have to solve; it couldn’t happen because it would put our entire universe in chaos. You are our center and with that center removed I feel off balance and I don’t know how to get myself right.

The whole month of May didn’t feel right to me, I wasn’t myself and I couldn’t understand why. And I think I realized that within that month my heart and my mind caught up with each other and my heart has let go of the fantasy of you being at home and I just haven’t seen you in a while. My heart has accepted that you’re gone and it became so much more painful for me. That week leading up to Mother’s Day was a tough week for our whole family. The anniversary of Grandpa’s passing, of losing Dakari and Derrick, it was one of the most emotional weeks I’ve ever had in my life. And then Mother’s Day came and I lost it all. I sobbed for you so hard, accepting the fact that I couldn’t call you and instead replaying our last conversation from your birthday in my head. And I cried for my mother and my aunts and uncles who had to get through the day without you. It’s just not easy. Everything in this family revolved around you. Every party, every celebration you were there in the middle of it all. And I don’t understand how we’re supposed to be the same without our heart.

Gram, I adore you. I love and admire you beyond what any words could express. You are the ideal role model for what a mother and wife should be, and I know that I could never come close to the heights you reached being both these things for so many years. But I will always try because being even a little bit of the woman you are makes me a better person, a better mother and a better wife. I watched you for so many years and you made it look so easy. As if having 11 kids was a piece of cake. Raising them and loving them in their own way came naturally to you. I’m sure you had hard times, how could you not, but I never heard you complain about anything, I don’t think anyone did.

You accepted these roles with grace and beauty. You love beyond measure and everyone in your life felt that love every time they were in your presence. There are so many of us grandchildren and great grandchildren and you loved each of us the same and differently. The same in the amount of love you gave each of us, different in the way we were loved. Only you could acknowledge that we are all different and what one of us needs doesn’t mean that’s what all of us needs. We each experienced different things with you, learned different things from you, shared special memories that only we hold dear. And that is amazing, that is a gift that you gave each one of us. Some of my memories are different from my cousins, my relationship with you is different, I think all of ours are, but there is such beauty in that. And we are forever thankful.

I admire everything about you but I have never respected you more than I did when I saw you take care of Grandpa when he got sick. What you did for your husband was nothing short of a miracle and it showed the depths of the love you shared with him. I visited you many times and I watched when he wasn’t himself, when he acted mean towards you because of the disease and you would sit there and take it all in, not letting him see how much it affected you. You would smile, or rub his arm and constantly tell him everything was ok. The comfort and kindness you gave him is not something many women could do. I know you’re probably saying, ‘Lee, I’m his wife it’s my job to take care of him’, and I know that’s true but everything you went through would have broken a lesser woman. The strength you had, the love you showed, everything I witnessed during that time are things I will carry with me forever. And when life gets hard, I think of you and all you went through and I tap into your strength and I carry on, just like I saw you do so many times.

I miss you. More than I have ever missed anyone in my entire life. I don’t feel whole. There’s a piece of my heart that belongs to you and it’s hurting. And I know it won’t always be this hard, but right now it is and I think it will be for a while longer. One day I will be able to look at your picture and not cry because you are gone, but smile for all of the memories I have of you. No one in this world will ever mean to me what you do, no one will ever take your place in my heart. Your shoes are too big to be filled by anyone else in this world. There will never be another person I look up to and idolize more than you.

I find it very hard to talk about you in the paste tense. Those words don’t taste good in my mouth. I won’t ever stop loving you, my memories of you won’t ever go away. I can still smell your perfume, I can still feel the softness of your face on my cheek when you kissed me and I can still hear you saying ‘love ya, babe’ as I left your house. I can still feel your presence; I can still see you sitting with my daughter. You are here. You are part of me and I will take you with me forever.