I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t miss my grandmother. She passed away years ago, but I haven’t got used to the fact that I cannot go running to sit at her kitchen table and talk to her over coffee. I have that kitchen table now and it daily reminds me of all those long talks. My heart is no stranger to brokenness – gosh that sounds much like some sappy song ……but, honestly, I have so many cracks in my heart that I’m not sure it can take much more. Grandmother would tell me that God heals those weak spots in our hearts and I believe and know that already. If I could tell her what I’ve been through lately, I know that she would emphasize with me and tell me about some occasion where she has gone through “just the same thing and felt just exactly as I did”. Her doing so, would not only comfort me in the knowledge that eventually we all get through these horrible things in life and come out better on the other side, but would also help me not feel so all alone. She never made me feel judged even if I needed it. She knew me well enough to know that I am harder on myself than anyone could ever be, so she just left out the criticism. In fact, she would gently remind me that I would need to be kinder to myself. “You’ve done all you could do”, she told me once when I was grieving over something that I couldn’t “fix” in my life. Just hearing the words gave me the strength to go on and she indeed told me to “let it go” and go on and live my life with peace of mind about the situation.
Yes, today, I really needed to talk to my grandmother. I never had a single doubt in my mind of her love for me. She lit up when I came to see her and was genuinely overjoyed to spend her time with me. For whatever reason, she was proud of me too. Imagine that, someone proud of me for just being “me”. She told me once that I was more like her than even her children. As I get older, I see things in myself and realize what it was that she saw that reminded her of herself. I’m o.k. with that. I just sure wish I could get her advice tonight because this would have been a long talk for sure.
Grandmother is in heaven where all these troubles that keep us up at night and tear holes in our faith will not exist. I’m going there someday and even though I imagine that I might want to tell her all these things I’ve gone through, there probably won’t be the need. It just won’t matter anymore. And this lingering grief and loneliness will be a faint memory. I’m sure that’s what she would have said to me tonight if she were here.
Fully Zoetic 
I miss my mother too. Before I started to work full time. My mornings always started with a walk to her house and coffee on her back carport. On school days I would take you kids to the bus and stop back by mother’s for that coffee. Most of the time I would have others with me that wanted to visit their friend also. I would take Sheba to see Tiger and Crystal to see Blue Boy. The siamese cats would wrestle and run all over the house and the birds would be let out of their cages to dive bomb us at the table in the kitchen. This was our morning routine during the week. Most of the time I would not go home intil 10a or maybe even 12n.
Surely mother had other things she needed to do but she never let on. Mother lived her life totally for her children and grandchildren. She never needed anything bad enough that she would do without it to do for her kids. Of course not all of us knew that but because I lived next door I saw how she would babysit (or a better word would be raise) her grandchildren. She had one or more of her grandkids every week. I guess with 8 kids and 27 grandkids that didn’t leave her much time for herself. But this is what made her happy.