The Whole Wide World

I’ve shared a few reasons I decided to come down here over the past month. There are a handful, including the adventure of it all. Checking off another continent of course and doing it in a way that I am making money as well. Not just passing through on a vacation, but really getting to experience it. And then there is also how crazy last year was for me. I was emotionally exhausted and the idea of time alone (kinda) at the bottom of the world to process everything was a small part of it, too.

June 9th was the one year anniversary of my Nana’s passing. This past year has really been the first time I’ve really experienced grief like this. I’ve had breakups and lost friends along with acquaintances and pets, and my Uncle passed away, but I’ve never had grief like that of losing Nana. I don’t sit in it for long when it comes, but when it does come it hits hard and I can physically feel the loss. It also often comes in some strange moments. Like in the pots room, when I picked up a hotel pan half full of Jell-O and was reminded of Nana’s trifle…and ended up scrubbing pots in tears.

That happened in the summer and I was grateful to have my friend Scott notice what was happening and immediately comfort me. I miss her so much and often wish I could go back and do those last five months over again, as hard as they were. I’d do them with just a little more compassion and a little more love, knowing it was the end of our time together. It’s not that I wasn’t loving or compassionate, I just would have given her extra. Extra hugs…and extra chocolates. And just a little more patience.

I wrote the following letter to her on the ninth and thought I’d share it here too. Nothing to do with Antarctica, but a lot to do with how I’ve been feeling.

One year of missing you.

My beautiful Nana.

You come to me in waves now. Like a stormy ocean, the feeling of missing you swallows me whole.

And I am practicing.

Not how to dive under the waves, but how to let them wash over me and come up breathing.

To let the ebbs and flows take me through the sadness, through those last five months. Back further, to a happier place.

Sometimes I’m still little, holding your hand and we are walking to get ice cream at Walton-on-the Naze, or walking through the neighborhood with Ella, to 12th Street Park.

Sometimes, we are getting ready together, to go out for the day on one of your visits to the States.

Sometimes, we are in London at my graduation, or Gaucho, or an evening with Michael Bublé.

Sometimes, we are just popping to the shop in Bishop’s Stortford and sometimes we are on one of our family holidays.

And sometimes, we are drinking gin and tonics, or maybe champagne, and you are singing along, while Grampy plays the piano.

But most of the time, when I see you, it’s in Ridley Gardens.

You are standing over the counter reading a recipe and I am laying the table, with the cutlery from the wooden box, folding the napkins like I do, knowing it will make you smile.

There is always music on. Abba, Shakatak, Adele, Michael Bublé.

I’m standing in the doorway, watching you look at that cookbook and knowing a feast is to come.

That kitchen.

It holds so many pearls, from an ocean of memories.

The ocean of you.