A note for those who mourn

A note for those who mourn:

My grandma, who raised me and was basically my mamma, died in 1991. When I think of her, it still does something to me that I don't quite have words to express, so much so that I have trouble writing this through the tears that her memory brings.

As the years have passed, I've come to view as something really beautiful the fact that one person can love another person so deeply, and that 20 years after her passing, she's still so real, and so present in my life as to inspire such a powerful reaction.  Missing someone a lot reminds you that you loved them a lot, and reassures you that you still do.  I hope I'm always able to enjoy that deep-in-my-bones kind of sadness as an expression of my love for her, until the day I see her again.

Time doesn't heal that hurt, but that's a good thing.  What time DOES do is alter the character of the pain, morphing it from an intense, shrill, constant, and at times overwhelming pain in places you didn't even know existed, into a deep-in-the-bones ache that appears and then subsides, and that is actually sort of beautiful, as odd as that sounds; something like Sarah Mclachlan's "glorious sadness".

I hope that hurt never heals.  I hope I'm always able to shed a few tears and, for a moment now and then, enjoy that glorious sadness as an expression of my love for my grandma, until the day I see her again.