And I Miss You...

All my life, I try my best to hang on to things, memories and people. I have two small boxes filled with gifts from friends over the years and I have three USB drive filled with words I’ve written as well. I don’t delete anything and I keep whatever’s precious to me close to heart. However, doing so was never a good thing to begin with. I’ve known that for a very long time – hanging onto a memory, it could very well weaken your resolution, and I, I like to hang on to every fond memory I’ve ever had, that’s why I kept writing everything down. Now today, out of the blue, I decided that I wanted to write a blog, so I started one, but I still keep a copy of what I write in a word document. Is there such thing as a cyber hoarder? Maybe, or maybe I just started a revolution, I’ll never know.

Still, that’s not the reason why I wanted to write. I just felt like I should when I came across an old document, a short post of which I made during one of my saddest moment, the day I lost my grandmother. In the post, I wrote about just how much I missed her even when she had just left me the day before. Reading it, it made me realize, I still do, miss her. In fact, I haven’t stopped. I don’t know how to stop and I have no idea on how to miss her any less. Not when my mother would mentioned her during dinner, like what type of food my grandmother had loved when she was alive, what type of dishes she would make, all of it, all of it made it hard for me to miss her less.

Funny, we’ve always known that we’re losing her; still, we can’t stop missing her. I was maybe ten, it was then she got really sick – breast cancer. It was detected late and my grandmother never recovered from it even after extensive surgery and treatments. Everyday, we watch her disappear bit by bit leaving the shadow of her former self behind. Her once strong stature slowly changed, she got thinner, her face was hallowed, and her taste bud was no longer working properly. We were already losing her, but we refused to acknowledge it, I refuse to acknowledge it. It was hard, growing up, she was my protector, my big and scary grandma, the one who can chase away all the bad things and make me feel safe.

I was losing her, I was terrified, too scared to move too far from her. No one in my family was ever really good at saying the words; I love you, but we all have something in common, we have always shown it in our actions. My grandmother didn’t pass right away. She lived for many years after that, but only as a lesser version of herself. I didn’t care, she was there, I know she was there and that was enough. But I was scared to move, to make big changes; I didn’t even dare to accept any offer to study far from home because at the back of my mind I knew, if I go, I would have missed the chance to see her one last time.

I never went anywhere, not until the day she died. The day that started like any other day, the day that I lost her and the day I still wish never happened. And I, I still miss her.