My grandmother passed away. Waves of sadness, relief, guilt, anger, contentment, nausea, and blah have rolled around inside me taking turns emerging at the surface.

Sadness for me, my mom, my family, and then, more sadness for me. It wasn’t until we were at the church and the Indian priest was talking about how our family was blessed to have my grandfather and grandmother together as God and family loving and community conscious heads of our nineteen grandchildrened family, that all the events of the past few days, the words spoken, the crying, and the memories of Nana came together is a mushy ball of love, sadness and fear. What would a world without Nana be like? Where would I go to find genuine concern, unconditional love, kindness, gracefulness, peacefulness, lovingness, joy, humility, wisdom, and God? I just remember at that moment intensely missing her, knowing nothing would be the same.

Relief that she wasn’t in pain anymore.

Guilt for being relieved that my mom would have some time to herself and for all the times I was insignificantly too busy to give Nana five more minutes.

Anger for people being so petty when being petty is stupidly time consuming and for being sucked into it. That’s not what Nana would do. Anger at my family for being crazy. Anger at myself for being even slightly concerned about being able to ask for something that was once Nana’s.

Contentment when I was with Matt…for having him around, for his love, for making me occasionally forget why I was home. Thank you for that my love.

Nausea for seeing my precious, beautiful grandmother at her most vulnerable, watching her wither away to nothing, dying while we ate in the next room.

Blah for not knowing what to do with myself and all these emotions, for my happy childhood memories of waking up in her house, for all the time we no longer have to sit in her kitchen and eat almond butter on rice cakes with fresh fruit and sesame seeds, drinking tea and chatting about what we plan to do to help save the world.

How was she always so kind? She never uttered or even thought mean words, she never lost her temper. She wasn’t naive, but innocent. Is that what happens when you live your whole life by God’s rules? Probably. She had peace and grace, and like my uncle said, she always knew how to make you feel special. Her eyes were kind and knowing, wise and compassionate. Her words were thoughtful and healing, gentle and calming. She was a saint amongst us- hot tempered, quick tongued, sometime thoughtless and selfish beings. I will miss having her world as a part of mine, I will miss her hugs and kisses, the peacefulness of her heart and her home, I will miss the life she created that I was blessed to be born into, but most of all, I will just miss her.

She is the example I have to live my life by. Thank you, Nana. I love you too too much and to the google power.