It's Been Two Years...

It's been two years today since my mother died at the age of 59.

She had turned 59 just a month earlier. ...

And her granddaughter Grace had been born just a month earlier....

My mother was taken away much too soon from us, but I've come to accept it over the last two years, after crying a lot, reflecting a lot on her life and thinking about how much she suffered since 1996 when she got pancreatitis. No one deserved to suffer the way she did.

Still, even when she was in the most gut wretching pain that even I can't possibly imagine, she always had a smile on her face and always cared about us first and foremost.

In the month that she was alive at the same time as her granddaughter Grace, my mother called everyday to ask about her, spoiled her as much as she could and died way too soon before she was ever able to see her granddaughter speak her first word or recite her first color or count to 20 for the first time.

I will always regret that she wasn't there to experience those moments in person and I will always regret that she wasn't there for Grace's Baptism or 1st birthday or 2nd birthday.

But still, I always know that she's always in the room.

I can literally feel it.

I talk to Grace every day about her grandmother and I could swear that she recognizes her grandmother's face when I show her pictures.

And I can swear that when we're playing, she sometimes looks over at the couch and can see her grandmother sitting there like she was the last time I saw her alive - truly alive - on March 16, 2009. ...