Our Life: Loss & Love

There are things in life that make us all introspective. Death seems to be one of them. This week my grandmother passed away. My stepdad's momma. She will be so missed. 

My relationship with my Nanny started later on in my life, so I don't have baby memories of her. It seemed this week that it wouldn't upend me; that this loss wouldn't undo me. Yet, my own personal grief has been a slow movement: creeping through me in small bursts of memories I didn't know were there, in tear-stricken moments of looking at the photos, and feeling her loss from those I love. Remembering how Moose before he could really talk would call her his "ninny." Remembering odd things - like how she had to take me to buy underwear once in junior high. Remembering how she loved me equally, instantly. She never once in my almost two decades of getting to be her kin treated me any different than her own flesh and blood grandkids. I was one of them - never a doubt in my mind. I didn't know how big that was. I didn't see the incredible commentary that was on the woman she was.

And so here I am: three AM, rocking the baby back to sleep because I was already awake, sleepless thinking of how hard it must be for her children in these moments, praying for all those feeling a void. Because how hard it must be to lose a parent, which takes me down so many other thought paths, and then, my tears are for all the other people in my life who have lost a parent. I must find my way back to solid ground where the introspection isn't stealing my whole brain, where memories and grief are helpful and healing, where praying for all my loved ones makes a difference, where I thank god for putting a grandmother such as her into my life.