Thinking of you...

         I can’t believe in a few short days; it’ll be 2 months since Grandpa and Grandma have left us.  I can’t believe how quickly the time is passing by us.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about them or miss them.  Some days it comes with tears, but some days it comes with big smiles or even a good chuckle.  We really shared a lot of great memories together.  There are still so many things I want to tell Grandma, just so I can hear her laugh again.  I miss the sound of her voice and the sounds of her laughter.  I miss her beautiful face and her beautiful soul.  I’m sad that she hasn’t visited me much in my dreams, but she’s probably busy making her rounds.  She was loved by so many and respected by all.  Grandpa must be traveling the world with Grandma right now.  Grandma made a lot of sacrifices and stayed home to care for us while we were growing up.  Mom and Dad both worked 2 jobs each, so Grandma had to be our caretaker.  Can you imagine having to take care of 3 rambunctious kids during the day and then having to be the chef at night?  Grandma was superwoman.  She walked us to school every morning, came home to do chores, hopefully got to squeeze in a nap before she had to pick us up from school.  Once we got home, she made us a midday meal/snacks as we did our homework in the living room.  Sometimes, we went grocery shopping with her.  She didn’t drive, so we walked to the local grocery stores together.  They weren’t far, but to grade school kids, it felt like MILES and MILES away.  Grandma suffered from severe arthritis, so we had to take a lot of breaks on our short walk home (less than a mile walk).  The 3 of us (Myself, Ann & David) would split the bags of groceries and tried to carry as much as we could so Grandma didn’t have to.  I remember carrying bags of groceries on our backs like a backpack, and then 1 bag on each shoulder and the lighter stuff by hand.  Since we were kids and we were short, holding them by hand was hard because it’d drag on the floor lol.  We looked forward to going grocery shopping with Grandma because she always got us an ice cream bar each.  AND we also got an egg from that giant annoying rooster “gumball machine” lol.  I really don’t know what the fascination was at the time, that machine was so loud and obnoxious lol.  Once we got home, Grandma put all the groceries away and started cooking dinner for the family.  We were a family of 9 for a long time, living in a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house.  Every night, we’d have 3-4 dishes and 1 soup.  We were never deprived of a home cooked meal.  Take out was really a privilege back then because we were poor. 

As poor as we were, we were never deprived of anything.  We had clothes, we had shoes, we had food and a roof over our heads.  Grandma was the glue that held us together.  She was the voice of reason.  The ironic part is, Grandma had the least amount of education.  In fact, she never had the chance to go to school.  Besides being able to tell time and read phone numbers, she was illiterate.  For as long as I can remember, to her, I was always “Melly” or “Meow-ly”.  But she was the most reasonable person I know.  She never irrational, she never acted on impulse.  She was careful and her thoughts were well thought out.  She never ceased to amaze me as I got older and started to understand “life” more.  For someone that couldn’t even read or spell her own name, she was very intelligent.  It’s nearly 3AM and I want nothing more than to climb into her bed and lay next to her and hold her hand just to hear her laugh and tell me that no matter how old I get, I’ll always climb into bed with her.  That was our thing.  Grandma was sandwiched between Grandpa & I until I was 12 years old; until we finally moved into the house that our family still lives in today.  I was 12 years old and it was the first time I had my own bed, but I had to share a room with David.  For the first few weeks, I’d climb into her bed and chat with her until Grandpa came into the room and kicked me out so he could go to bed.  Decades later and Grandma still talked about it as if it just happened.  I miss her so, so much.  It still hurts.