I've obviously never met you, but for some reason, I've felt a strange connection to you my whole life. Maybe it's because I'm close with Mom and she has always said that when she lost you, she lost her other half. Maybe it's because I had such a good relationship with Grandpa, and I doubt I have to tell you about the small framed picture of you that he's buried with, and that was always in his front shirt pocket every day for as long as I can remember. Maybe it's just because by all accounts, you were as close to a saint as anyone could ever get, and I was always sad that I never got to meet the woman behind the stories that no doubt would have helped me tremendously when I felt alone and at my most depressed. Whatever the reason is, the connection has always been there. When things have been tough, I've on occasion felt someone around when nobody was in sight. I always liked to believe that was you. Even when I was really young, I always had it in my head for some reason that you were never too far away, and that you would always keep me protected and safe.

You've really been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm not entirely sure why. I think that just seeing how much happiness Mom and her first grandson bring each other really makes me realize that I never got to experience that. Of course, I always had Grandpa, and he was the best grandfather I could ever ask for or that he could ever possibly have been. I never really had a warm and loving grandmother though. Sure, I had a grandmother, but even you knew in life that my other grandmother is nowhere close to the warm, loving, and caring person that you were.

I'm told that you were quite possibly the best cook that ever lived. Mom says all the time that her cooking doesn't even hold a candle to yours, and that's really saying something. I wish that I could have tasted anything that you ever made, but even more than that I wish I could have just sat down at the dinner table and had a conversation with you. Even just one. There are so many things I wish I could tell you about. I wish you knew that I love to cook too, or that I'm the homebody of the family just like you were. I wish you could have even seen me to know that Mom eventually had a child that looked like her, and her family. Even just the fact that you never got to hold me or see me even as an infant breaks my heart sometimes.

You know, some families tell their young stories about superheroes. Mom and Grandpa told me stories about you. The things you did for my oldest siblings, the type of parent you were, and even just the little habits you had have all been the subjects of stories through the years. The terrible truth is, all I really have of you is stories. I don't have memories, or gifts from you, or even more than a handful of pictures of you.

I see stories all the time on Odyssey about the impact someone's grandmother has made on them, or how lost they are without their grandmother, or even about how the things they learned from their grandmother shaped who they have become as a person. They're usually sad articles, usually because the grandmother has passed away recently. I could never write an article like that, but you are a woman that deserves to be written about, so I wrote an article like this. And if you ask me, there is no greater tragedy than that at age 60, years before I was born, the world decided for you that you would never even get the chance to make that impact on me.