Dear Grandma,
God I miss you. I don’t know what I expect this to do. Write a letter I’ll never send. Words you’ll never read. I miss your voice. I miss your laugh. Your little dance when you were happy. Your soft wrinkled hands. Your smell. I miss it all. I miss you.
You are the first person in my life that I loved who died. My heart is having trouble adjusting to a world where it can’t love you. I don’t know who to call to rant to. Who to whisper my secrets to because I know you’ll make everything alright. Who is going to love me like you? Who is going to make me feel that sense of safety and security. There is no one in this world who will make me feel as happy as I did in your arms. Those hugs saved me. They brought me back time and time again from a world where my parents were too busy fighting themselves or each other to realize I was breaking on the sidelines. Grandma how am I supposed to put myself back together now? You were the glue.
I was your boogie woogie and you were my grandma. MY grandma. That word doesn’t begin to express everything you were to me. There’s so many memories. interwoven in this skin, I feel them to keep me warm. The smell of drywall and the feel or the rough but soft carpet coming up and down your stairs. Sneaking the TV on to watch Teen Titans and getting caught every single time but still being allowed to watch it anyways. Your oxtail and stew peas! You never taught me the recipe. You took that with you too.
The breakfasts we used to make. Eggs and ketchup, toast, bacon, instant hot chocolate in little white styrofoam cups. We’d smoosh together in your flower covered armchair made soft as silk from years of your body sinking into it. You’d turn on the little TV and the scratch openings to little house on the prairie or some other old movie would come on. I didn’t care what we watched. I was happy. I was with you.
You liked Hot Topic lmao like you genuinely liked hot topic. I hated the mall but going with you was everything. Who else will sit in a car and eat entire spinach pizzas from starbucks of all places with me as we wait for our movie showtime. Long walks to frostys after dinner and the adventure that was blockbuster on the way back.
Who am I supposed to talk to know grandma. I only want to talk to you. I try not to think of you too much because it still hurts. I feel you every time I walk up the basement stairs. Every time I smell Jamaican food. Every time I see a blockbusters. Every time my mind is still. I hope that you’ve found peace. If Heaven is real I know you’re their. No one believed harder than you after all.
I love you so much. I’ll never stop loving you. I hope a day comes when I stop waiting for you to come in through the door, peek your crimson topped head around the corner to see what I’m up to. I’d give anything to have you bug me one more time.
Your munchkin misses you greatly,
Love Maia