The First Year Without You -

There are only a few hours left of 2013, and I’m left with one thought: These are the last hours in the year that my grandmother was here.

It is hard to explain, but the thought of a year in which my grandmother hasn’t graced it with her presence, is devastating to me. While I spent part of my Christmas visiting her grave, a holiday that she adored and the first Christmas during my life in which I did not see her, the more global concept of each year going forward will be hard to fathom. A year in which she will not share with me. A year in which she was not in.

2013 was a crappy year: My surgery, her death, my son’s diagnosis, my blogging (and blogging ‘friends’) reality check. So I’d should be embracing a new year, and I will. But I enter 2014 with some sorrow (and a couple of pounds to lose.)

Nana, if you somehow could see me typing these words or could read them, know that the thought of a year without you breaks my heart. I cannot believe there is a full year (and many thereafter) in which you will not be in it. I miss you dearly.

So tonight, in the last minutes of the year in which you were alive, I am going to be putting on two bracelets: Cartier love bracelets. I bought them from the money you left me, so it is something that, in essence, you bought for me. And each represents your two Great Grandchildren that I know you adored.

I will be wearing them everyday knowing that it is a gift from you to me, that I donned for the first time, in the final minutes of 2013, the final year in which we shared, in memory of your life and the life of my children; your great-grandchildren. I could have bought any bracelet, but the Love bracelets seemed fitting somehow. To represent love that you have shown to me in the 39 years we had together, and the love you had for your great-grandchildren.

I cannot believe I will have another 39 years (or more) before I can see you again (I hope). But I will take comfort when I look at my wrist at the symbol of the love between generations – between me and you, between me and my children and between my children and you.

This picture in particular I will cherish. Though there is another I will cherish equally and that is the last picture I have of you – taken three days before your passing – with you, me, and your two great-grandchildren. But you would be mad if I shared that photo publicly, so I’ll share this one and one that represents so much in my life.