Three years ago today, my family and I suffered a great loss, which rocked an already loosened foundation from less than two years before that.  Less than a month later, some of my cousins would face another blow and, six months after that, I lost another person that was special to me; 2009 was not my friend.  She was a daughter, a sister, a wife, mother, aunt, cousin…but she was my grandmother.  When I was young, she and my grandfather moved fromNew YorktoFloridaand, due to circumstances that were beyond my control, I was not able to see her as often as I would have liked.

At our most recent family gathering, my cousin Jill and I, while sitting on the stoop to get some fresh air from a stiflingly hot house, aside from our usual discussion about boys, brought up our grandmother.  She possessed many talents; one of them being that she was an excellent seamstress.  We’d go over to her house where, she would get out her tape measure, or have fittings of a partially made dress.  We had couture dresses and I didn’t even know it; perhaps that is where my love for fashion stems from.  I don’t know what made Jill and I think about it at that second, but we did.  We were for a moment, feeling the loss…then both said how, we wished that we still had those dresses, at least one of them.  Maybe they are packed away somewhere.

Not long after, Jill and I vacated the stoop, as the coldness of the cement was seeping through, and rejoined our family inside.  I thought of my grandmother again when our aunt handed out the annual potholders; she had taken over the tradition of making them.  Its funny how, despite a loss, life always continues.  You never get over it; you just go on. 

Three years ago, I was sitting at my desk at work, wishing for my father not to call me.  In fact, he had been down there for a week and, every day I would call him…multiple times, because I knew that when the day came that he called me, my grandmother would be gone.  I was sitting at my desk three years ago when my father called me.  I knew before I even picked up the phone.  I took off from work for the rest of that week and was on a plane the next day; my father met me at the gate.  There’s a lot that I could say about that cluster of days, many, many things…  The main thing is that, I lost my grandmother that day, and I’ve missed her ever since.  I’ll love her forever.