"I just had a sandwich."

I've been missing my grandmother more than usual recently. I titled this post with the phrase (excuse?) she usually gave my mom and me when she didn't want to eat with us or have us bring her something back. It got to be a joke after a while. She loved to eat, but sometimes convenience would win out over fanciness. She was one of the only people I knew who ate fish sticks willingly past the age of 6.

Moe was my full-time nanny until I was school-age. She came over to my house while my parents worked to watch me and make sure I didn't consume any of the shiny liquids under the kitchen sink. Sometimes I'd go to her house, where we watched hours on hours of A&E shows and game shows (we watched way more Murder She Wrote, Law & Order, City Confidential, and Family Feud than any human being should watch in a lifetime). She fed me chocolate before I could chew it, but never pieces big enough to cause choking. She took me to Krispy Kreme every time we went to the bank, which was conveniently right next to said doughnut shop. She came to every Grandparents' Day at St. Nicholas except 5th grade, and we made the yearbook a couple times. She gave me dolls upon dolls, my Easter basket, her jewelry, and more: she gave me my sweet tooth, my tendency to tell stories unrelated to a conversation, my stubbornness, my loves of law (see above shows) and all things "girly-girl", and my chapel talk topic, which I like to think of as her legacy. "I love you all like the fingers on my hand." She really did love people like that. Her kids, her grandkids, even strangers. She could hold a serious grudge, and if she didn't like you for some reason, mercy on your soul. But those were the few, the unlucky few. Everyone else she would drop everything to help at a moment's notice.

There are so many people I have met since Moe passed to whom I wish I could introduce her. And even though she passed away coming up on 4 years, I'm still getting teary-eyed while typing this. I cry because I miss her of course, but also for other reasons. I think of how frail she became after chemotherapy/radiation treatment. The time she broke her ankle when my mom was at Lake Winnie with me and had left her phone in the car. How isolated she felt after having her license taken away and couldn't walk without a walker. I want to take all the pain, suffering, and sadness out of her life, all of it, even and especially the hard times I wasn't alive to witness. I want it never to have happened, and yet I want her at the same time to be here to meet my new friends. Paradoxical yes. The heart wants what the heart wants though.

Her funeral almost killed me. I distinctly remember the hot tears streaming down my face as I drove myself home from my precalculus exam. I hadn't had time to arrange a makeup, and I didn't want to tell anyone at school why I would need one anyway. I remember wearing a turquoise sweater, because that was her favorite color. I remember not being able to sit in the outdoor venue at the National Cemetery where her funeral was held because I couldn't stop crying. My dad stood with me on the curb. I remember walking past her grave site while the diggers were putting the dirt back on top. That one moment itself almost killed me because it made her death seem too real, too final. I remember waiting anxiously for months for the carver to put her name on the headstone she shares with my grandfather. I hated the little plastic stub with a paper card in it because it looked ugly, but at the same time, I liked it better than the more permanent carving. And I remember the first time I saw the carvings, finally starting to accept that I wouldn't get to see her or hug her again, at least not anytime soon.

The grass has long since regrown over her grave, and the groundskeeper (I presume) has enjoyed a Ferrero Rocher box or 2 that I left at Christmas. I made it through second semester of junior year, through senior year, and 2.5 years more after that. I like to think that, from Elsewhere (borrowed from the Gabrielle Zevin book), Moe is keeping tabs on me. But I can't help selfishly wishing she were still here sometimes.