Nan...

I miss you. It's a little less than a month until your birthday. I miss our long calls, I miss our long talks while I cleaned your home and you would stand over me giving me shit for every little thing.

You were the strongest woman I've ever known. The most opinionated, the most out spoken. It's a rare quality you had.

I hated seeing the cancer eat away at you. I hated seeing you become such a small person withering away to nothing as the cancer ate at you. I hate myself because at the end I couldn't stand there and watch you take your last breaths, and be there for you the way you were for me so many times over the years.

I know that you never accepted your fate, you fought it like a champ. You were too worried about everyone else to allow your body to give in and have the rest it so desperately craved. That was just you, underneath your tough exterior, you had a pure heart.

I'm glad I passed up the opportunity to go see you laid out at the funeral home before your cremation. As I saw in the hospital room the day before you passed, that really wasn't you. I don't want to remember you like that. I want to keep you in my memories sitting there in the early morning sun, enjoying the songs of the birds, a cigarette in one hand, your boobs flopping to your knees... that was you. What I saw in that hospital room that last day was a shell... not MY Nan.

May you rest in peace until I can see you again and take my proper place beside you in hell.