Missing Her

Sometimes it hits me how much I miss her. I don't think I fully grieved when my grandmother died. Perhaps it was the overwhelming entrance of a new life into my world, my sweet daughter, that overshadowed the loss of another life so dear to me. She passed two weeks after Layla made her appearance.

But it will strike me, slowly and sadly, when I'm riding on a country road, staring at the swiftly passing trees - this emptiness, a space left by her departure that can never really be filled, because there will never be another her.

There is some connection between these two ladies. I knew it the moment I saw my daughter's beautiful face. She looked uncannily like my grandmother; it was my first thought when we met. It was then that I knew her middle name would be Virginia, after my grandmother. And where did we rush to as soon as we were discharged from the hospital? To the nursing home to see Grandma, worried that she would leave this place without ever having met Layla. It meant so much to me to see them together. I'm not sure why, but it was important, necessary somehow.



And now, my darling girl wears another badge of likeness to her great-grandmother - her fiery red hair.
This is special to me. It's like a family heirloom that she carries with her at all times.



I guess the missing never really goes away. It seems to me the sadness gets replaced, a little at a time, by a fullness of love and gratefulness, for who she was and for what she left behind.