"She talks to Angels, says they call her out by name...."

Well when you have enough loved ones in the heavens above you...that sounded a bit too religious but you get what I am saying. I remember it like it was yesterday, 11 years ago today, sleeping in my pink walls and pink rug childhood room, home from college for christmas break, just returning from our last family trip (all five of us) from disney on january 3rd, only to experience one of the biggest heartaches a kid should not have to go through. I still remember the sound of your voice down the hall, my youngest brother, tears and cries you can't even imagine. To say the sound was heart wrenching is an understatement. He just turned 13 1 day shy of a month before his godmother, our aunt had passed from her 4 year courageous battle with breast cancer. My three cousins, motherless. There were no words, only tears. I remember the phone ringing, I remember my dad trying to hold back the tears to tell me, I remember my mom was already gone to tell Sittoo with the others. I remember rolling over to face the wall, shutting my eyes, so numb at first that it took a few minutes for tears to start rolling. And the pain. all of the pain I could hear from down the hall and from my other brother across the way.

It's been 11 years. I don't remember your voice, but I do remember your smile. I don't remember your smell, but I do remember how you'd call my mom everyday, even if it was just to say hi. I don't remember your touch, but I do remember the way you walked.

It's been 11 years, eleven years since all of our lives changed, and if somehow you could just let us know you are ok, and that you are watching us, we all know you'd say to be happy, keep going on, don't worry about me, I am rested, pain-free, comfortable. I am living, we are living, but my sadness on this day, I guess is my way of respecting you and what you meant to me, to all of us. Not a day goes by that you are not missed, thought about, or talked about by one of us.

So today, I remember you, we remember you, by being together out at dinner eating a cinnamon roll just for you!

Love and Miss you Auntie, you're all around us...

happy 84th nonna.

"Funerals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. They’re to help us survive when it feels like the grief might just kill us."-private practice

Just because I don't talk about you as much, doesn't mean I don't think about you, doesn't mean you were not a significant part of my life, does not mean I loved you any less. It's your birthday today, and you're smiling down on us, atleast I hope so. Maybe if I had visited more, called you more...you would have remembered me. I still remember the last time I saw you. It was on your birthday, six years ago, on a Saturday as well. Looking back, I am not quite sure I was ready for it, mentally and emotionally prepared. I mean, I knew you had dementia, I knew it might have taken you awhile to remember me, but I didn't think it would go the way it did.

I walked in to the nursing home, (that you resided for the last three years of your life, after already living one year in the rest home across the street, horrible places, not the worse because in previous jobs, I visited some pretty horrible living conditions in rest homes/nursing homes) asked for your room, because sadly I don't remember visiting you in the nursing home, walked up to your room, and you were lying in bed, looking skinnier and more out of it (for lack of better terms) than I ever remembered in the rest home. Dementia: a loss of brain function that occurs with certain diseases. It affects memory, thinking, language, judgment, and behavior. a degenerative disease, changes in the brain that are causing the dementia cannot be stopped or turned back. The disease had certainly taken its toll on you in just four short years. A nurse was in the room too. She was helping you into the wheelchair, I'm assuming because you had a visitor, and by the looks of it you were sleeping awhile. You had a single balloon tied to the wheelchair, and the nurse kept saying "you have a visitor, it's your birthday." The nurse left. I stayed for about an hour or so. The first half of my visit, I spent telling you who I was, "Hi Nonna, it's Lianne, your granddaughter." I remember the wheelchair at the end of the bed, you were rolling gently back and forth in it, as it was not locked into place. I crouched down in front of it so you could see me better. If I remember correctly, your eyes weren't open so bright. I don't really remember them being so open for long periods of time. The last half of my visit, I kept trying to tell you why I was there visiting, "It's your birthday Nonna, happy birthday!" It was probably one of the saddest things I've seen, and that's coming from seeing my aunt lying in her hospital bed in the bedroom of her own home, hooked up to machines, days before her death. I had no idea just a short four months later, you would pass too. June 9, 2005.

I remember a lot more than sometimes I would like to remember, but I guess that's just how it works, the good with the bad. I don't get sad when I think of you like when I think of Sittoo or Auntie or Linds...and I am sorry. It does not mean I cried any less when you passed or loved you any less when you were alive. To me, you were gone before you left this Earth. As much as I can't stand having this crazy good memory, I would hate to have the last four years of my life taken from me by such a horrible disease. If you don't have your memory, if you don't remember the places you've been, people you've met, your family you loved, then what is left? Laying mindless in bed day after day, with rotating staff in a place that smells like the people in it. I can't imagine, I can not imagine your thoughts, your feelings, your last four years. What were you thinking about? Who were you thinking about? What did you talk about with the nurses and roommates you had?

I can only hope you were thinking of those beautiful puppies you had, the great people you met and worked for, your family who loved you more than they showed it, your beach houses at the Cape....We always will have those weeks at the Cape, you sitting in your beach chair with Bella, and then Sammy lying in the sand behind you and when it was lunch time, (we always packed our lunch, couldn't miss any quality sun bathing time...maybe that's another reason why you and my mom got along so well....beach worshipers!) out came the tinfoil wrapped clam strips or other seafood leftovers and you would share them with your pups! We'll always have our visits to chinese restaurants, visits to our house for what you thought was a month long visit (only a couple of weeks), your company at the holidays with mom's side of the family, and birthday celebrations and cards filled with single dollar bills to make us laugh, smile and remember the happier times.

Our last visit might have been the saddest one of all, but it was our goodbye, and I only wished I had visited more. So I took with me that single smile you gave me in the entire hour I was there, your way of letting me know that even if it was just for a split second, you remembered me, you knew who I was. And as I said in your eulogy at a mere twenty two, may you lie forever peacefully in the sun on your beach, you and your puppies, your two true loves in this world.



Happy Birthday Nonna. I love you!

hate. love. sittoo.

so it's been bothering me about my last post, about having so much hate inside me towards others and just sometimes life in general.. like how unfair it is sometimes, beyond our control. I don't want to come across as an unhappy cruel person, because I am happy, this is one of the most happy times of my adulthood thus far. We can all vent and be envious of other peoples lives sometimes, the good with the bad. I know that people die. We all do. And I know that the very bad people rotting in jail are peoples loved ones too, but they did very bad things, and naturally should be punished for what they have done...why do they get to live? why do they get three cooked meals a day? why do they get to have visitors? I can't visit you anymore, and it's just not fair. simple as that. I visit your headstone, even though I know you are not there. You are all around, you show up in the most happy times, when we are thinking about you or talking about you.

"You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain hurts less...but the gap never closes. How could it?...This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it."

six years. its crazy how day to day nothing seems to change, but looking back on six years, my how things have changed, the people I've met, the jobs I've held, the relationships I've been in, the new friends I've made, the old friends I've lost, the cars I've bought, the places I've lived, the places I've visited...so many stories, so many memories that I can't share with you. If only you could see me now, part of you might be shocked at the stuff I've done and changed, but I know that deep down you'd be proud and you'd be happy and you'd be supportive. I wish I knew what you would think of all of this, and what you would say to me..if you could be here now. We all wish you could be here now. I never thought I'd miss the sound of someones voice the way I do, the way you answered the phone and we'd always laugh, the way you went down the line of your childrens' names to get to the right one you were trying to talk to or about...your voice, your smell. two of the things I miss most. funny, because you'd think it would be your cooking, but mom has stepped it up a bit... it's crazy how much leb food she cooks these days. maybe it's the house, maybe it's you. It is the house, it is you. maybe it's her way of missing you, cooking like you used to. six years. love you. miss you. thinking of you always.