Dear Grandma,

To say I simply miss you is an understatement. I still cannot fathom the fact that you are gone. It's like a bad dream that I keep hoping I'm going to wake up from someday. Yet I find comfort in the fact that I know you are in heaven now, watching down on me constantly. I feel familiar flashes of your presence everywhere I turn, watching me and guiding me to make great choices and to follow the dreams you know lie within my heart.

When I have particularly hard moments of missing you, I follow the advice a dear friend gave me right after your passing; I sit with your memory and embrace it, letting tears roll down my face. I smile and laugh at our countless memories.

You were always more to me than a grandma. You were (and in my book, still are) my best friend. No one in this world will ever understand me the way that you did. I wear your perfume and feel your guiding hand pushing me through the critical decisions I am making in my life. Although I cannot simply shoot you a text and expect awesome advice as a response, I feel as if I know what you would tell me.

You are the strongest woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and I feel blessed to have had your influence to help shape me into the woman I want to be. It is still shaping me, even though you're in a better place now, sunbathing on a cloud as close to the sun as possible.

I find solace in the fact that you are no longer hurting, no longer in pain and struggling with the fact that you can't clean and take care of us. You taught us how to do for ourselves, even when we didn't feel 100 percent or were simply feeling lazy. You made us laugh until we were in tears at the silliest of things, and most importantly, you taught us to love with all we have in our hearts. To love our God, even in the face of hardship and to love one another, even when one of our family members is being near impossible.

There are times when I want to call you to ask you how long to cook corn or to tell you how well my semester went, but then I remember, you're there through all of it, giving me the strength to push on and persevere, even when it feels next to impossible.

You were a get-it-done kind of woman, not focusing on trivial matters and instead, focusing on the experience at hand. I smile as I remember you, feeling your warm hug from heaven and knowing that as long as I remember your example, I too can become all that I dream to be.

Forever yours,

Your loving grandchild