but you went away---how dare you? i miss you.

I feel like I should write a tribute post to the woman who inspired this blog. She's been gone for almost two months, and I still can't believe it. Part of me wants to say that she was gone for far longer than that--her declining health took away her independence, which was a huge part of her. But that's not true. Even at the end--even the week before her death, when I last spoke to her--she was still her. She still had the feisty Irish wit that charmed and confused everyone she met. She still had a great perspective on life.
I miss her terribly. Not in the same sense as my mom and sister. While I have cried over this, it hasn't been constant, or public, grief. I don't think she would have approved of either of those. Rather, it's been a cloud of melancholy that has hung over me for the past two months, but, as with most clouds, there have been rays of sunshine bursting through. For every moment I spend realizing that we will never again sit on the couch with a tub of icecream between us watching the NBA playoffs, I also, blessedly, have a moment where I realize that she is the reason I am who I am. Ironically, she is the reason that I want to fall apart at the moment, but also the reason that I absolutely will not--she has inspired me to be strong, and she has given me the tools to be strong. She went through a lot in her life, and she never let it temper her unbridled joy or kill her sense of humor.
For the last year of her life, every time I spoke to her, she said, "I've let a great life. I have no regrets. I have really, really had a great life." I hope that at the end of my life I can have the same perspective. She crammed more life into her 93 years than five normal people. She climbed mountains and danced with generals. She bought meat off of burros and defended her house with a flashlight and a can of rocks. She played jokes on people--often for no reason--until the very end. I loved her, and I miss her.