I have spent the better part of the last week and a half attempting to write this post but fell short every time.
It is always easier to write with joy in your heart than with sadness.
For most, February is a month that celebrates the joys of the heart. Love, friendship and special relationships are at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Some cherish the ones they have and others look around and feel the sting of ‘what they are missing’ but February started out with a devastating heartbreak for me and my family. In the small, quiet hours of the morning on Monday February 4th my grandmother slipped away from us after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
Shortly after she was diagnosed I started to fight through the anger surrounding what we all knew would happen as the disease progressed and stole her from us. Over the past several months we have been preparing ourselves for what was to come as the incredible in-home nurses talked us through what they knew was on the close horizon for us but it still feels like she was taken from us without a moments notice.
My grandparents would have celebrated 60 years of marriage on the 4th of July this year and they shared a love that rivals those of the greatest love stories ever told. Their devotion to each other survived 12 years of deployments and relocations while my grandfather served as a US Marine, the birth and raising of 7 children, tough years when money was tight, and the joys of 13 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild.
That is what I am choosing to celebrate this February.
I am still angry that my beautiful, vibrant, hilarious, kind, unconditionally loving, firecracker of a woman Nana had everything that made her who she was taken from her but I am going to celebrate the joy and light she brought to us
As always thanks for taking the time to visit!
~Leah
