We All Still Miss You

4 April 2009 at 11:37 pm (Family)

Today marks the one year anniversary that my grandmother left this earth and moved onto a better place. Today is a day for me to be happy within all my memories of her but to be sad in my sense of loss and knowledge no more memories will be created. My grandmother passed last year from lung cancer. A disease unbefitting of her because she never smoked a day in her life. Her suffering was not without pain but it was relatively quick. Good for her but sad for us, as her health declined so rapidly. BUT, the good thing was that we were all able to say our goodbyes. My last memories of my grandmother are not good ones.

My grandmother used to speed through the hills of Nova Scotia earning her a jokingly yet loving name of Hot Foot. I inherited my dislike for slow walkers in the mall and on the streets from her. She was not a woman that moved slow in any way. But the last time I seen my grandmother she was still, frail and fragile, vulnerable and unconscious laying in her deathbed. I sat by her side and didn’t know what to say. I sat stiffly and, unsure of myself, just held her hand and didn’t do much else. I couldn’t. This woman laying before me was Mum, as I called her, but she wasn’t all the same.

I didn’t do too well after she passed. I had a lot of regret and shame for certain things but I remember sitting watching TV in the few days after she was gone and seeing a commercial flash her name across the screen. Plain as day. I don’t remember the commercial. And I haven’t seen it since. But it was then and there I knew she was OK. She was at peace and she was telling me that any regrets I had to not have them; to let them go, because she will always love me regardless.

 Whether she’s physically with me or not. I miss her. I’ll always miss her. And while my very last memories of her are unpleasant ones, my all over memories of her are amazing. I am her namesake. And I am STILL proud to be her granddaughter.

Mum, I love you. I miss you and I know you are watching over me. I know it. And I know you are resting in peace with your sisters, your beloved husband and all our deceased loved ones.