How To Say Goodbye

Dear Gramma,

You've always been able to 'get me' when no one else can. So I needed to write to you today about this ginormous hole in my heart. It is the kind that is there, deep and lonely, but I hide it well, because, like you, I don't normally cry and us strong-willed women bully through the hard times.

But, you told me once, sometimes a person goes away and you do what you need to do, even when the love hurts so bad and the ache is so great, you're not sure if you'll ever be whole again.

I've discovered something this week. I found the answer to that. I will never be whole again. At least not here, not in this life. Oh, I'll be okay, and I'll smile, genuinely smile, but all the while the gap in my soul will exist.

Inspirational quotes abound about filling this vacancy with hope, an eternal perspective, the joy of life in Christ, and reunions. While I believe them all, and find them to be wealthy with truth, today, I need more than prose. I need you.

So, maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I'm just a realist. But, grief is the price of love. A high currency and a painful one. Still, it's one I don't regret paying, though the pain of missing is sometimes stronger than the truth of Heaven.

Anyway, you've never given me a look of reproof. Okay, maybe that time I cheated in Go Fish. But in things of the heart, never. You and I, we wear our pragmatism on our sleeve, but our emotions are as wild as they are untamed. So today I wanted to confide in you 'cause I know you won't reprimand me . . . this hole? In my heart? You left it there. When you left me.

Today I'm supposed to say "goodbye" to you. The goodbye until we meet again, sort of goodbye. But really, Gramma? I don't want to. I refuse to. Because, today my sense of realism and deal-with-it doesn't have enough suck-it-up to survive. Today, I just need you. And you're not here. So, can you teach me one last thing?

How am I supposed to say goodbye?