I Miss You Every Day

From left to right: Auntie Michelle, Aunt Charn, my Grandma Carlene, my dad Tony, my nephew Grant Jr., Auntie Jodette, me (July 2019).

Some times I pick up my phone and I go to call you. I need to talk it through with someone. I need to just laugh. I need to know that it is going to be okay.

But you aren't there. The number no longer belongs to you. There is no response to a text. All I can do is read the ones that you have already sent. Closing my eyes. Straining my ears to listen. Trying to remember what your voice sounded like.

I still cry when I hear the songs I shared with you. We used to trade them back and forth. Some days the emotions are too strong and I skip past them. Other days, my heart needs the words to wash over me and remind me that you were here.

Tears well up in my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I write this. You stamped a place on my heart. You were the most beautiful soul I ever knew to walk this earth. You were light. You were kindness. You were strength. You were grace. You were my Auntie Michelle.

Some days we wouldn't talk about it. Some days you would share everything that you were feeling. The struggles. The pain. The sickness. The desire to go back to the days when you could go mountain biking for hours, running for miles, or having the energy to make it through a lunch at your favorite restaurant.

I remember the last time I saw you. I flew down to visit a before my wedding. We rehearsed how you would do my hair. We talked about my dress. We laughed as we floundered through playing a virtual reality game. We talked about how you would find a way to be able to be there on that special day.

You stayed in the same outfit for those three days. You didn't have the energy to change. The medicine you had to take made you sick. Your body was tired. There wasn't anything that I could do for you. We prayed. We talked. We dreamed. We were kindred spirits of friendship and family.

I didn't know it would be the last text I would send you. You were back home in the hospital. Your soul was getting ready to go home. You didn't look yourself. It was hard for you to open your eyes.

I wrote to you all of the ways that you made my life better, that I owed a renewed faith in the Lord to you. I told you how special you were to me. Just like you always reminded me how special I was to you. I wrote what was on my heart.

Instead of your reply, your sister, Auntie Jodette, wrote back.

She said that the text was the most beautiful thing she has read but that you never got to see it. Moments before I sent it, you had taken your last breath. Cancer had taken your body but your soul was called home.

I sit here full of grief still, two years later, almost to the day. It doesn't get easier. Some days are full of the wonderful memories. Some days, like today, are full of the things that I miss terribly about you.

You are no longer in pain. Your body is now perfect. You are no longer suffering. Although our hearts are broken, yours is whole. You are waiting for us to meet you in Heaven.

We do not know why you were taken so soon but we know that God is good in the grief. His ways are always good, even through the pain and sorrow. I know that you are still with us. I will feel you in a quick rush of warmth in a cold breeze. I will see a small light come and go in a moment. I will hear your voice in a verse or a song.

You may be gone from here, but you are awaiting our arrival home. I will see you again one day. Together, we can walk the streets of gold, sing praises for all days, and spend eternity serving the one true God that always was and always will be.