One year...

It’s been one year since we lost my grandma and I knew it was going to be a tough day when the first thing I saw when I logged onto Facebook that morning was a beautiful picture of her that I posted last year. Thinking back to a year ago, everything happened so fast and I don’t think I truly processed it then. In those last moments with her, I didn’t want to see her in pain and I loved her enough to let her go. I felt confident that she knew how much she meant to me and I had no regrets. As the days have gone on, I have certainly found things to regret. I regret not pushing harder for her to come stay with us when she came back to Texas. I offered and she didn’t want to disrupt our home life with the kids. I hate that she spent one minute alone in her house when she could have spent every minute at my house being spoiled with love. I regret not being by her side when she passed. She was by my side for everything and I wish I was the one holding her hand when she left us. I regret not planning a funeral service that she would have been proud of and certainly deserved. I let family drama and chaos get in the way of what mattered. I have tried to allow myself some grace in all of this, but it’s difficult.

Everyone says that time heals, but the pain of losing her is just as hard today as it was one year ago and I can’t imagine this feeling ever going away. There’s a constant ache and a huge void. I know I’m not on my A-game anymore and just try to get through each day. The holidays were very tough. I missed having her opinions on Halloween costumes for the kids, piling into her house on Thanksgiving for ham with pineapples, and adding to my Fenton collection at Christmas. I found myself at the doctor in January with some heart concerns. After a complete check, blood work, CT scan and an ECG checked out fine, we determined that I was most likely having an anxiety attack, which makes complete sense now. That made me realize that I need to focus more on all of the good and I do think that I’ve done better since the beginning of the year.

The kids talk about her often. When we see a beautiful sunrise or sunset, I tell them that it’s Mamma telling us hello and sometimes they will point it out before I do. The kids were talking about Mamma being up in the clouds the other day. Tyler got a little emotional and pointed one out and said that he knew she would choose that one because it was the best cloud and said that she would make it “all antique-y.” Sweet boy. I wish it was easier, but it's not. I'm missing everything about her today.