by Cheryl Oliver

Created on: April 18, 2008

I chose this title because I have been feeling for a long time now that there is something that I need to get off of my chest. Something that has been breaking my heart for far too long. Weighing on me like a deep, bitter burden. My grandmother raised me until I was twelve years old. That was twenty-five years ago, and yet the feelings surrounding the day we got the news of her death still haunt me. Sitting in my stomach, eating away at me little by little. I can feel her presence very close to me. I guess thats normal on days of importance, like my wedding day, or when my babies were born. She's certainly there at those times, but I feel her even in the ordinary everyday moments of life. Those are the moments that I feel particularly robbed. The quiet normal days of early spring, or the busy, chilled days near the holiday season. The days I think we ought to be together, baking cookies or tying beautiful bows onto packages.

Some days I miss her so much that I sob uncontrollably, and other days I still feel angry about my loss. Perhaps if she had the opportunity to live into her old age, I wouldn't feel the loss so deeply. But my grandmother, I called her Honey, was murdered. She was only forty-five years old, and she never said good bye to me. She had met and fallen in love with a man named Sam. They were getting married, and never told me. To this day I am unsure of why she chose not to tell me. They eloped. Ran off to Mexico on a whim and got married. I had to stay with my mother that week, which was difficult enough. Then to receive the worst news of my life from people I hardly knew.

Honey, and her new husband were driving down an old dirt road, somewhere in rural Mexico. They were in a jeep, without doors, and my grandma fell asleep. Since she wasn't wearing a seat belt, when Sam swerved to avoid hitting some cattle in the road, she fell out, and was killed instantly. A terrible accident. That was the first story we heard.

After several weeks in a Mexican prison however, Sam's story started to evolve, bit by bit. He eventually confessed to her murder. I don't know where Sam is now, and I don't care. I never even met him. People have asked me if I want to confront him, and tell him what he stole from me, when I was just a child. I am not sure if my shrink has ever lost anyone so suddenly, or in such a horrible way, but I think she must be the crazy one. The last thing in the world that I want is to have to explain how I feel to a man that I don't know and that I have such disdain for. How cold he must be inside to be able to look into the beautiful, loving eyes of such a magnificent woman, and take her life away. Away from her, and away from me, away from all of us who loved her and her great-grandchildren who never got to know her. No, this is not a man I ever want to meet.

What I want is for someone to explain to me how to move on. How do I find a way to fill this incredible emptiness, this void, this chasm that her death left inside my chest? My heart ached for her on my wedding day. I needed her to be there with her sound advice, and comforting ways. Now I need her here to teach me how to be a better mom, and to share with me her recipe for beef stew. I loved her beef stew. I need her to guide me through this crazy time in my life when I am trying to find balance between my career and my family. I need to know how she made Christmas so wonderful, and how she always found time to plant a vegetable garden.

Mostly, what I need is to know that she is in a quiet place right now, watching over me and my family. I suppose I do know that. I feel her hand on my shoulder even as I type.

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