20 years ago today…

20 years ago today, was probaly the worse day of my life.  My grandmother passed away.  I never think of her as being gone, I think of her as someone who is with me all the time even though I can’t see her.  I ask for her opinion, I think of what she would do or what she would say.  Most of all, I ask her to watch over my children and I know she does.  She was like a mother to me and I am not saying it in a cliche kind of way.  She really was.  Not to take anything away from my mom, it would certainly be unfair of me to do that.  But mo mon worked 2 jobs so my grandmother watched me.  In a way you can say that she raised me. 

You know how people say that eventually you turn into your parents… not me.  I’m turning into my grandmother.  And I say it with pride.  She was the head of the family, the one who people came to see, the one we all looked up to and respected.  To me, it is a privilege to be like her.  She wasn’t a “sweet” kind of grandma’, she was “old school”.  You did what she said and you better not talk back.  She was strict and stern yet she spoiled us all to death and we all wanted to be with her… how did she ever magane that?

She left us way to soon, it was just a few days shy of my 18th birthday.  I had so much that I still wanted to share with her.  I did in a way but it has not been the same.  So much has happened in the last 20 years yet it still feels like it was yesterday.  Still hurts and I still miss her and not a day goes by without me thinking about her in at least a small way. She would have loved my children, I wish they could have met her, that way they would understand why she means so much to me. 

I looked for a picture of her to post but there are very few.  She didn’t like to have her picture taken (neither do I).  All of the pictures I found had either a hand halfway covering her hand or a frown (she really didn’t like to have her picture taken!).  I do have this one from when she was young.

She would have been sooo mad at me for talking about her and posting her picture.  She would say that you have better things to do than to read about her and to look at her picture.  But honestly, I did it for me.  Because I miss her.  So “Tia Zulema” (I never called her grandma, I always called her “Aunt Zulema”) wherever you are, please know that you live in my heart.