Last night I picked a ran­dom arti­cle from my Instapa­per queue to read to my wife as we were falling asleep ¹ and picked ‘The Woman Who Went to Every Coun­try’ by Ali­son Agosti in The Atlantic think­ing it was going to be a story about travel.

“She’s not in any pain,” my mom said. She had the tone of a woman talk­ing to a small child, and I was totally fine with that. She held my hand as we walked into her room and there she was. My grand­mother was named Lenora. She was an accoun­tant, and later a teacher, and she could play piano and tap dance. She had a big funny laugh and was a gen­uinely kind per­son, and now she was in hos­pi­tal bed; tiny and crum­pled and con­nected to a mil­lion machines, all beeping.

A year ago this week both my grandma and my wife’s grandma passed away. I had posted my own thoughts on their pass­ing in a blog post here after attend­ing both funer­als within a few days of each other. And now I found myself read­ing an arti­cle a year later telling the funny and sad story of some­one else’s Grandma passing.

And I kissed her fore­head again and walked out, leav­ing behind a huge part of me. She has been a part of my life for my whole life and now she isn’t. My mom called the next morn­ing to say she’d gone. That it was peace­ful. All the things you say. And that was that.

I miss my Grandma. I love the inter­net for remind­ing me of that.