Today is September 5, 2008.
If my grandma was still alive, she would have turned 93.
That doesn't change the fact that she died on July 21, 2003. That seems like so long ago, but really ... five years? Five years really isn't a long time. I guess a lot can happen in five years. In the last five years, I have attended three different schools (high school, community college, university), I have graduated twice (high school and university), I have flown over the Pacific Ocean five times (to and from Korea in March 2008, to and from Japan in May 2008, back to Korea in June), and I started my first "real" job. That's a lot of changes to occur in five years. Maybe that's why it seems like it was so long ago.
Doesn't change the fact that I still miss her.
She was a really sweet lady. She hated when other people didn't get along - especially me and my (adopted) brother. When we would fight, she would start to cry because she thought that if she cried, we'd feel bad and therefore we'd stop. It usually worked, too. She taught me so many things both before she died and after. She's the first person who taught me to read, when I was really young (before preschool I think) and to this day I still have a deep love for reading. She taught me how to bake (ps, I think I'm slowly dying without an oven), she taught me about nature (thanks to long walks through the woods that we would take when I was really young), and she showed me how to love other people, no matter what they do or say.
Some of my earliest memories involve my grandmother and the things we would do together - taking care of animals on the farm, making pies, reading "Rabbit's New Rug" ... there's more. Trust me. There's lots more. I just ... I ...
As I get older, I'm finding that my memories come and go. What I remembered about her two years ago, I can't remember now. It saddens me, and scares me - I don't want to forget about her. There are things that I want to forget in life - and I can remember those so clearly. But what I hold dearest to my heart, the person who for all intensive purposes raised me, I can't forget her.
Sometimes, if I try really, really hard, I can remember things about her from a long time ago that I had forgotten about. Do you know what I mean? It's like those memories were stored in the farthest corner in the attic that is my brain, removed from everything else, gathering inches of dust on a tiny shelf that is just holding on to the wall with a single nail and about to fall. Sometimes, it's almost like I can catch those memories before they fall from the shelf and shatter into millions of pieces, lost forever to the sands of time.
Sometimes, even when I am trying to remember, I can only come up with a single memory of my grandma - the one from July 21, 2003. It's a memory that is painful to think about, but sometimes it's all I have and I stubbornly cling to it. Sometimes, it's all I can think about.
I'd like to think that somewhere, my grandmother knows what I'm doing and what I have done. I'd like to think that she was there, holding my hand, when I received my high school diploma, something she'd never received. I would like to believe that, as I walked across the stage at Saint Martins University behind Raymon and Daisuke and before Jesse and Deidre, that she was walking beside me. And I'd like to think that somehow, somewhere, she's proud of me.
September is generally a hard month, and I sense that this one won't be an exception. We'll just take it a day at a time.
Happy birthday, Grandma - I love you.
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