Grandmas: they’re the people we love because they overload us with candy and sugar, buy us whatever we want for Christmas, and spoil us to no end. But for some of us, they become our person, best friend, second parent, and the person we love most in this world.

Hi you,

When you were here, I didn’t realize how much you meant to me. Now that you are gone, I wish I had told you how much I loved and cared for you. I miss you more as each day goes by. You are the first person I think about in the morning when I see my favorite picture of us on the wall. That picture gives me comfort; it reminds me how much you love me. I am flooded with thousands of beautiful memories of the time we spent together while you were here and it puts a smile on my face.

I know you are watching over me, but it breaks my heart to realize you are not here. I missed you when I couldn’t see you in the crowd at my high school graduation, every time we broke out the cream puffs on Christmas day, and when I felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody because they wouldn’t understand like you do. Though we only spent a short 16 years together, you alone were my person in this world, and it broke my heart when you left me. Though I knew it was time to say goodbye, it created a hole in my heart which can never be filled because there will never be someone in my life as special as you.

You taught me some of the most important lessons. We danced our way through many cooking sessions on how to make your famous Memere dip, your delicious chicken soup that I can never seem to get to taste like yours, and your tapioca pudding.

We laughed through many laundry disasters that you fixed with a simple pinch of baking soda. We cried through the stories that you told about the ones who came before us. We chatted through many games of goldfish, watched too many episodes of "Judge Judy" and "Family Feud," and I applauded you for attempting to try and teach me French.

You showed me what it meant to be a strong, independent, French-Canadian, faith-filled woman. You showed me what it meant to be humble, to be able to find happiness in the smallest of things, and that family, friends and faith, are really the most important things in this world. Though life threw us curve balls you showed me how to keep going because you always said that life was too short to worry all the time.

Even though you are not here with me, I feel you and see you throughout my day. It makes it a little bit better to cope with not having you around. I smile when I hear the “Gloria” at church, I am comforted when I look at the pictures I have of us together and smile when someone offers me a Werther’s Original caramel candy because I think of the millions that you always had in your purse.

I’m doing my best, every day, to show you that I did pay attention to all those lessons. I work hard because it is the only way I can show you how much I love you. I can’t wait to show you how much more I will accomplish. Thank you for those 16 beautiful years we had together.

They were messy and complicated but filled with so much joy, love, and laughter. Keep resting, knowing that I am doing OK without you here. But keep watching over me. It’s good to know that I still have my angel wherever I go.