more than words.

It was really hard for me when my grandmother passed away.
I didn't have much to say really. What was there to say?
I miss you, I love you, what more?

I managed to get something out by the funeral, but still no words could describe how I felt. I knew that I meant a lot to her, and I knew that she loved me deeply so sometimes I would wonder how she could leave.. I mean we all have to some time. It's all rhetorical. I'm not really looking for a definite answer. It just surprises me that people leave EVERYTHING behind when they pass. None of this all matters (material things) anyway.

Two days ago I found myself in a room with a pile of once-cherished things. Old photos, clothes, jewelry, glasses, music boxes, hats, a whole wall full of stuffed toy animals. Among those things I found a little green notebook, and in that green note book -- a message. It was a message to me written back in 2003. I don't have the notebook right now or I would quote the short passage, but in it, she said that she loves me, Justine, truly and so deeply, deep down to her bones. I sat on the couch reading it over and over as if to see more writing, but nothing. Just that. She ended that statement with a "No kidding!" too which I thought was cute.

I'm really glad she's in a better place, but life's just not the same without her. I've been reminded constantly about her too. Last week, I took my sister mini golfing and there were bushes of gardenias everywhere. She loved gardenias so much she used to pick them out of her tree for me.

There were flowers all over her plot at the cemetery. She loved my dad so much. She was so proud of him, and always talked about him and his kids. She always asked him to do things for her because she felt like she could depend on him all the time. And when we visited her on the 3rd day after she'd been buried, all the flowers from the service were scattered on her grave site. It was so messy, but it was a beautiful sea of colors -- a bed of roses and tulips. My dad and mom helped clean up the flowers so that it wasn't so messy. It was as if she'd purposely done it to have my dad be the one to fix things because we were the first ones there.

She was different.
Seriously.. you wish you had a grandmother like mine because no one can say that their grandmother was classy, beautiful, elegant, popular (with famous people), proud, boastful, disasterous, crazy, loud, fierce, assertive, loveable, forgiving, generous.. what a combo right?