There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think about you grandma. It has now been over 2 years since you went into the hospital and never came home. But to me, it seems like much longer than that. The holidays are the hardest without you and as we have entered the holiday season I miss you more and more. Most of all, I miss the little things about you gram. I miss walking into your kitchen to find freshly baked cookies on the counter (I still haven’t found peanut butter ones that are as good as yours) or walking into the living room after stopping on my way home from practice to find you watching the news and commenting on the happenings of the world. You always had an opinion on things, and I always loved to hear it. Sometimes it made me laugh, and sometimes I would just shake my head in disagreement. I would love to hear your opinion on the results of this presidential election, but I guess that won’t be happening anytime soon. I miss stopping on my way into town just to say "hi" and to see what was going on. I miss trying to figure out if you had added any more giraffes to your giraffe collection in your front room. I miss summers picking strawberries and blueberries, and teaching me how to make jam. I miss the jars and jars of pickles you used to make. I miss your pumpkin pie. I miss decorating the Christmas tree with you. I have made sure that there is still a big, fat, real live Christmas tree with red lights and lots of decorations like you used to love each year since you went to sing with the angels.

Thank you for teaching me to make jam before you passed away. Thank you for instilling hard work in me. Thank you for pushing me to be my best and for always being honest with me if I wasn’t living up to my academic, intellectual or athletic potential.

I miss you making sure the family knew you felt and what you wanted. Something I will always remember is that even when I got the call to come home to say my final goodbyes, as I stood at the foot of your hospital bed, you told us that you wanted sunflowers at your funeral (even though it was January and there was 6 inches of snow on the ground), and all the songs that you wanted played. I had to step out of the room to sob at that moment, but as I look back, it was comforting to know that even after so many medical setbacks, there were still parts of you that hadn’t changed.

Now that you’re gone, I miss you especially in the big moments in life. In less than 6 months I will graduate college. I know that you will be looking down from heaven on me, and if you have any control, try to make sure I don’t trip and fall when I walk across the stage.

I love you Gram.

And for everyone who is reading this who still has grandparents in their lives…I don’t regret for a second that I took 15 minutes out of my day, time and time again in my high school and early college years before my grandma passed away to stop to spend even a little bit of time with her. I can’t say that I saw her hospitalization and eventually passing coming, but those moments were ones that I will never get to relive but I will treasure forever.

So, if you are fortunate to still have your grandparents in your lives, call them, tell them you love them, if you live close enough just stop in and have a short conversation, ask them how their day was, because some day, there will come a day that you will no longer be able to do so and to be quite honest, a lot of days it really sucks.