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Just a Feeling 

When you go on vacation to the beach, you go home, and find sand in the nooks of your bag, the binding of your new summer read, and between the joints of your sunglasses… You didn’t mean to bring it, but somehow you ended up with it. Seeing it dulls your mind with dreams of being in the salty air that once surrounded you.

At first, when my grandmother passed away in December, I felt nothing much. I spent a day in my room. And as my mind drifted off, I couldn't understand why I didn't cry. I was close with my grandma, and I loved her. She taught me so much, and shared with me ideas, stories, among other little details in her day.

About four months later, I find myself walking the streets of Savannah Georgia, and in one of the riverside shops, I see a ring with a shell in it. The same kind of shell her ring was made of. It made me think of her, and the while time I was in the city, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Later that night, we all went to see my aunt’s friend and her house. When we got there, we walked up a narrow hall, up steep steps, and around a corner banister that wasn’t steady enough to even hold a glass of water on it. We got to her livingroom, and I could feel my eyes getting watery. It was like my grandma designed it.

Abstract paintings on each wall, some with faces in them, but all so colorful. Her couches, bright orange and red. Her kitchen was like an obscure cafe, big enough to fit only two people in. Everything had my grandmothers memory embedded in it somehow.

I realized that it was then that I felt her death. All of the colors, and style, and unique furniture, with mirrors, shapes, lines, faces; perfume bottles with necklaces hung around them sitting on a shelf. It wasnt ‘put away’ but it was in its place. She was there but she had never stepped foot in the apartment.

Once back on the dark sidewalk of Savannah, I cried. My aunt wrapped her arms around me, and I explained, well, everything I just told you. I think you miss people who've gone for multiple reasons, but for me, its feeling their life, and their presence- when you know that somehow they’re there, but not exactly the way you wish they could be.