One Year Gone

I can still remember her voice. When it's quiet, and I close my eyes, I can hear it in my head. I had heard Grandma say "hello" so many times when she picked up the phone that it's palpable sound sometimes wakes me up at the edges of my sleep.

I can still see her too, the image of her as we left the house on any given day, standing in the doorway as we pulled out, holding the screen door half open and waving to us goodbye. I could tell she missed us as soon as we pulled around the corner. In the last couple years before she got sick, I remember pulling away and being ambushed by my own sadness, caught off guard at the idea that I may not see her again, that anything could happen. Finally I was right to have worried. Grandma had been sick many times before. Countless visits to the hospital over the years ended positively--a mitral valve replacement, getting a pacemaker, gall bladder removal, hernia surgery. She always returned home and before long was back to her normal self.

The fact that knowing the day would come when her mortality would be realized--that I'd be stared down into a casket at my grandmother--did nothing to dull its consummation.

She's gone and I'm troubled. Frustrated that there's no one to be mad at. No person or thing to blame for her not being here except our biology and life. Is it really worth the trouble of putting all these things into place, loving so many people, just to have it taken away?