Loss.

So, every year on my Great Grandma (Gram)'s birthday I feel sad. I miss her so much. It has been 6 years since she passed away, and it still gets me everytime.Yesterday, She would have been 100. 

Growing up, my best friends birthday was on the same day as my Grams, so I never forgot! {By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY AL! I might have forgotten you yesterday. All of you should check her out and wish her happy late birthday too!} I always called her, and she always made it about me. Thats a grandma thing, right?

We were close. Really close. She taught me how to sew. {Granted, it was just sewing tissues together at 4 years old} She always let me help her make my grandpa lunch. {My favorite thing to make was salad, and the number one ingredient was water??? LOL} She is the one person who taught me that our stomachs have no idea what time it is, and she nurtured that by feeding me cookies and cream ice cream and hot dogs, usually before 11am. She gave me my love of Price Is Right. She taught me how to play gin rummy, and always knew when I was cheating. I always slept with her, and she always let me pick the Tv show we fell asleep to.

Then she got older, and more frail. I still look at the last picture of the two of us, and am amazed at how great she looks. I have all of these great and wonderful memories, and I wonder if it is because I chose not to see her once she got sick. Now, I know this sounds horrible, but once she got bad, and was in a home, and was just not the same Grams anymore, I called her all the time, but never visited. I didnt want the last vision of my Grams to be a bad one. I fight this all the time. And I am stuck feeling guilty. I cry over it. It hurts my heart that I made that decision, and I think it will haunt me forever.

Maybe I did the best I could at 18, coping with the loss of the first person close to me. I think my Grams knows I love her. I talk to her all the time, and I usually feel like she is listening. But I still miss her. Everyday.

I Love you Grams.