One year ago today, I held a hand for one last time. It was that same hand that had taken care of me, in many ways, for the first 18 years of my life.

That day my life changed exponentially. My grandmother, an angel on the ground, had become my angel in the sky.

It was not as though I had never lost someone in my life. However, there’s something incredibly different about losing your best friend.

I spent most of my childhood with my grandma and she soon became more than just a grandma. She was my main confidant, a mentor, and a friend.

Some of my most profound memories from childhood were sitting on the swing in her backyard watching birds on her porch and putting together puzzles at her house. Her home was essentially my second home.

So, naturally, when she could no longer take care of me, we switched roles. I became her caretaker. I took care of the household responsibilities that she could no longer tackle. I coerced her into family gatherings and took care of getting her plate or helping her maneuver throughout crowds.

Although it hurt to see her missing out on the things she once loved from bowling to sewing, I came to her house every day determined to make her smile. I missed our outings to the bowling alley or the days she would sit with me and try her hardest to teach me how to crochet (even though the skills do not transfer easily from right-handed teacher to left-handed learner) but I knew it was not her fault.

Even when she moved to a nursing home, I did my best to maintain a happy lifestyle for her. When I visited, I played the flute or read my articles from the school newspaper to her. The hardest part for me was probably watching her in her last six months. While she still remembered me, she grew confused and rarely had a solid idea of what was going on around her.

Yet, it was still a jarring surprise the day she entered the hospital. Up until that point, I was extremely confident that she would get better and return to her normal self. At the beginning of the day, even the doctors believed she would get better. But, regardless of what we had all thought, that day was our last day together.

Leading up to college, I was worried how much my grandma would miss me when I couldn’t visit enough. But, as it turns out, I spent the last year missing her for an entirely different reason.

In some ways, it’s as if my grandma never left. I vividly remember the first race I ran after her death. It was my last 3200-meter race on my high school track team. I had not been doing as well in my senior season and I did not expect much out of the race. Even though I did not get a PR or even meet my goal for that day, it was still one of my favorite races.

The sun was dipping in and out of the clouds that day. My friends decided to run alongside me for this last race since the other team did not put any of their runners in the race. As sad as I was that it was my last race, I was running in my fifth or sixth lap and I looked up just as the sun began to creep out from behind the clouds.

In that moment, as I ran beside one of my best friends and accepted the end of my high school track career. I felt an extreme happiness. It was as though my grandma was there too, cheering me on from the sidelines as if she was just any other spectator.

Since that day, I have felt her with me on multiple occasions. I think about her on days that are especially tough, thinking about what she would say if I had sat down next to her on that old swing in her backyard and asked her what I should do. I think about her on especially wonderful days, silently thanking her as if she had somehow organized the events of the day to go just right.

Last month, I was driving my car back to college from my hometown for the first time. There were times where I got a little off track or scared that I would not make it the entire way to college and I felt like she had guided me.

At one point, I was in the wrong lane as I was trying to get back on the highway. I ended up taking a slight detour on to roads that were not clearly marked at all. It took me about ten minutes to get back on to the highway and the whole time I was silently hoping that I was driving in the right lane and one of the trucks milling about would not stray off their path and hit me. The second I got back on the highway, I immediately thanked my grandma.

It was a beautiful night and the stars had just come out not too long before. I suddenly felt extremely connected to her as if she was sitting in the passenger seat and it had been her, not my GPS that had guided me back to the highway. She felt so close that I imagined I could reach my hand out to the passenger seat and she would take hold of it, reassuring me that everything was fine and once again I was worrying for no reason at all.

I have come to realize that even though she has been gone for a year now, that she will always be around in some way or another. When I was younger, she had always told me there were guiding angels that were there to help. Of course, at the time she was also telling me she was one of the Easter Bunny’s ducklings that would help get the Easter baskets ready or one of Santa’s elves working with him up at the North Pole.

I believe her now more than ever. It may have been my first year without her but it was also my first year with an angel by my side.