Nanny

You know, I know she has been absent from our lives for nearly 10 years… but not a day has gone by where I don’t think about Nanny. And now that she is officially gone, I can’t help but think of all the things I could have done. Stupid things. Let her have the TV when she wanted to watch Murder She Wrote. Played more Uno. Sat with her more. Visited her more in the end. I wonder everyday if Nanny would be proud of me. I wonder if she would like who I have become. Nanny always said that I was going to be a teacher. And every time I had a professor complement me, I would smile and think that Nanny would have said the same thing. She died the day before I started my student teaching. And I know that with her state of mind in the end she never would have known the difference, but I keep thinking that she will never get to see me be a teacher. I wish the me who I am now could have 10 minutes with her in her sound mind to show her who I’ve become. To drink green tea and eat microwave bagels and lucky charms and to have her sing “A Bushel and a Peck”. The last time she sang that song to me, I was 12. I was in the back bedroom of her trailer and I was spending the night there because Gram was sick. Nanny came back to tuck me in, and I thought it was so stupid. She sat on the bed and sang the song to me. I don’t remember how I outwardly reacted, but I remember thinking that I was too old to be sang to at night. In the past 2 years, I have had vivid dreams about Nanny. Dreams where we talk, dreams where I just see her and try to talk to her, dreams where she is fading away and I can’t reach her. I know she is dancing with Jesus, and probably has been for a long time now, but something inside of me still feels empty now that she isn’t there anymore. A lot of the family says that they made their peace with this a long time ago – and in a way I did too. I knew that she would never come back. I knew that her passing would be better for her, and that she would be mortified if she knew how she was living the past couple of years. Maybe it was just vein hope that she would be back. I guess the bottom line is that I miss Nanny. I hope that she looks down once in a while and smiles on all of us.