Saying goodbye isn’t easy.
Especially when it is to someone
who lit up your life
and let you light up hers.
Someone who you love too much
and who always enfolded you in love.
Someone who you think of
at countless moments each day.
You treasure your memories
And struggle to accept that they are complete.
I remember being carried to bed at night
and snuggling beside her to warm my toes
My confessions in the dark of the mistakes I’d made
Watching The A-Team, Mr. Who and Knight Rider on Saturday afternoons
Visits to the bush doctor with foul-smelling results
Long comfortable silences, and difficult conversations
Going to the store to buy Glow Spread
and coming home to bake a pound cake
Making cocoa sticks
Me cooking for the children in the neighborhood
on Saturdays when she had gone to the garden
Watching her apply white powder for church
And wiping white reside off, stating that we’re brown.
Pickups from the airports, and dropoffs, blinking back tears.
And always, always feeling her love.
I don’t know how I’ll say goodbye.
To my grandmother, who was really my mother from babyhood until I was 12.
I carry you in my heart Anastasia Rosina Smith.
December 25, 1938 – November 20, 2013.
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