Floating Through

I'm still processing my Grandmom's death. I asked my therapist yesterday, "How long does the sadness last?" He said, "The funeral was on Friday... well... it will last a while longer..." So, I float. I miss her. There has been a lot of missing in my life. But this one is bigger... the first chapter among many I'm sure will follow in the great missings of my life.

Writing has helped the most, so I have been writing and writing. Memories pile onto memories until it seems the room is filled with them. All of them spark joy... and sadness that there are no memories left to make with her.

I will likely write more here about it. But for now, I wanted to put this here... the words I wrote a few days after she was gone.

She Was Just Here.

She was just here.

I got down to Texas in time to sit next to her on the bed and talk. She gave that to me, two hours of forcing her tired lungs to push out word after word, each one thrust into the air with… each… breath. The next day she barely spoke a few times for a few minutes, and on the last day, not a word.

Nothing has ever felt like that to me. I’m not sure the word for the emotion I felt. Looking at each other, everything else was washed away by the tears that ran down our faces, tears that burned with the purity of love and the sorrow of our coming separation.

She was just here, squeezing my hand.

And just before that, some days and years before, we were playing cards at her kitchen table, just the two of us. We were making dolls with yarn and clothes pins, my sister and I carrying a basketful to the craft shop where she’d cleared a shelf for us. And just over a year ago, I was calling her as I biked home from work, talking about nothing, just happy to hear each other’s voices.

She was my friend. She was a person always in my corner. She was the kind of grandmother you don’t know to hope for when you’re little, and the kind you hope you’ll be when you have your own kids.

I wish, I wish, I wish for more. I cannot help but wish for it. But the love she gave me to carry is plenty for more than one lifetime, a love more eternal than a star.

The last thing she said to me… “We really love each other don’t we.” I said, “Yes, Grandmom. We really, really do.”