Written With Love,

My grandma was the best. I know that sounds biased, but she really was. 

Growing up I adored my grandma.

I remember all the freckles that filled her arms. Arms that held up her rounded back guitar next to the campfire, as she sang and us grandchildren giggled with one another about all the silly lyrics she made up. I remember the unique brown speckles in her blue and green filled eyes. Eyes that always were also filled with kindness, and gave playful winks when they noticed me sneak an extra cookie from the cookie jar. I remember her hands, decorated with jewelry that held significance and beauty, hands that doodled caricatures and portraits of unfamiliar faces using old charcoal pencils and spare pens laying on spare counter space. 

In 3rd grade I learned cursive, and to practice my long hand I started writing letters to my grandma. I would write to her about friends, my art projects, my excitement for christmas, my favorite teachers, all the little things that feel like big things to kids. I remember running home to the mailbox after school in excitement to see if I had gotten grandma's latest letter. She would always doodle her waving or some clever and endearing message on the outside, to make sure the postman knew who the letter was supposed to go to. In her letters she would tell me stories about her and grandpa, or what my mom was like as a young girl, and how we weren't that much different.

In every letter she always made sure to tell me how important I was, and showered me with praise and love and excitement and all the things grandmas do for their grandchildren. 

As time passed, letters about field trips turned into letters about the struggle of middle school friendships, the stupid drama of prom,  the excitement for college, and the thought of changing my major for the 6th time. The letters were filled with all the emotions and feelings you witness in all those coming of age films, where the main character is a little dramatic and maybe hyper focused and sensitive at times, but figuring it out. 

But my grandma never was annoyed by my feelings, she loved hearing about all the childish things I cared about, and how things made me feel. She never rolled her eye, or diminished my experiences (even though I may have needed it at a time or two). She was excited to read my writings, and even in hard letters, or moments I always felt better after seeing Grandma. 

My letters started with more excitement, questions and curiosities of life, her letters became more difficult to read. Spilled black coffee stains filled the pages of her notepads, marking moments of clumsy encounters. She would start a thought and jump to something else mid story that didn't really make sense or apply to our conversations, and by my final years of college the letters stopped and she found it too difficult to create thoughts and translate them to paper. 

In her last handful of years with us I would sit with her at her kitchen table and watch smoke evaporate into the air as she snuffed the butt of her cigarettes into her already filled ashtray. The outline of her nasal cannula, lining her cheeks and falling off her ears as she struggled to readjust her oxygen supply. I’d listen to Patsy Cline playing  in the background as she would sing along and tell me all the songs I would need to learn to play on the guitar and sing. 

Even in those final few years we shared, there were moments where her humor was still so youthful. Whenever we were together we spent a good amount of time laughing. She would tell stories of mischief from her early twenties, or all the chaos that would ensue in raising 7 children while grandpa worked, many times we would gang up teasing or pulling childish pranks on my mom and aunts which, in hindsight must of been pretty annoying, but my grandma and I just got such a kick out of it. 

We really just got a kick out of each other. 

She thought the world of me and I thought the world of her. 

In this stage of my personal coming of age story, I’m realizing that a lot of being an adult is working, in your occupation, for your family, to pay off bills, and loans and you don’t get to see people as much as you wish, and when you do, you fill the few hours you have talking about work and your family, and friends and all the work you're doing.

Adulthood so far is pretty repetitive, and there are not a whole lot of stupid pranks, long handed letters,  and you almost never run to your mailbox.

There was never any pressure to write or say something positive, or perfect, or elegant, or groundbreaking with her. There really was never a “point” to being with her, her company and presence was enough. The point, I guess, was that we were together. Just being and existing along side one another. And I am still trying to figure out what that looks like without her here to do it with me.

Even as I write this conclusion, I am thinking “what is the point?” “What is the silver lining?” “What do I want people to take away?” . And I realized the process of writing this was enough. Because in the story telling of my grandmother I find myself laughing, humming “I Fall To Pieces”, feeling the presence of the brown speckled eyes, and freckled arms embracing me through the unanswered letters of life. 

To just be. That is enough.