No new memories

Dear Grandma,

I have been putting off writing on the blog.  You were one of the main reasons I ever started it to begin with.  I remember Ignacio as a baby and me writing new posts.  I would wait for your phone call to tell me you had read it and you would laugh and say I was such a great writer.  Now those phone calls won't come.  No new phone calls will come.  Today I was filling out Ignacio's school forms and it asked if there were any new events or changes in the child's life.  I burst into tears as I wrote that you had died.  Ignacio came to tell me something and asked what I had in my eye as he noticed I was crying.  I said that they were tears.  He then asked why I was sad and I said it was because I missed you and he looked at me and said you were always with me.  With that he took his little hand and held it to my heart and said, "Right here."  He was right.  You are right here.

I was thinking today about how, this time last year, were together buying Ignacio's school clothes.  The striped sweater, the blue jeans.  I called you his first day and took pictures of him for you.  You were so much a part of his first academic experience, just like I imagine you were a part of mine. And I missed you so much today.  I wanted to call you.  Emilio asked to call you two days ago.  I didn't know what to say.  I almost called you during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics but then remembered you wouldn't answer.  I missed you then too.

I am sad to think think there will be no new memories, for me or the boys. It is hard to believe that you died.  Harder to believe that there will be no time spent with you again here on earth.  I miss you.  I miss your laugh,  your guiding hand, your love, your praise for me as a mother and woman, your touch, your wisdom.  Mostly I miss you being a great-grandma to my kids.  I miss Emilio walking around the house talking to you on the phone.  I miss watching my kids open up packages from you. The magazines keep coming from you and I feel my heart get heavy as I set them in little extended hands.  I miss getting off on Hwy. 29 with excitement that we were half-way there. 

The grief is so thick for me today and the love so deep. Maybe it is Ignacio starting school or the leaves that are changing...I don't quiet know.  Ignacio said on the microphone at your funeral that we shouldn't be sad because,  "now we all have an angel" and, if he says it I am going to believe it.  So to you my dear angel, I ask for strength and kindness and I send love and sadness into the universe with hope for healing.