Que Sera Sara?

This weekend my grandmother left the world as we know it.

And in her brilliantly stubborn way, she did so exactly like she would have chosen to do so: In her house, with her nails done and with all of her family laughing and telling stories in the kitchen.

It went very quickly, too quickly for me to say goodbye, but fast enough it kept her from the worst. I have to be grateful for that.

And for the last couple of days now she surrounds me like spiders. That is to say, I am never more than 6 feet from her memory. If that.

I put away laundry and remember she gave me these socks.

A woman passes me at the grocery store wearing her powdery, floral perfume.

Someone else’s grandmother smiles micheviously and buys an ice cream cone from a truck.

I am crawling through a lifetime of memories and moments.

It is wave upon wave of emotion. Glorious and rough and just right.

Tomorrow I will travel to half way around the earth with my mother.

We will stand on a mountain top and say goodbye. A pair of feisty, bright women, a mother and daughter, facing the world, on the edge of adventure. Just the way she would have liked it.

I am overflowing with love and longing and huge, heavy things that cannot fit into the confines of words.

But I know one thing for certain.

I am so fucking lucky to have known her.