October 30th, 2019
This October sunset was different than the others. It marked the end of the first day I spent in a world without the most important person in my life: my grandmother. I stood in our front yard after the sun tucked below the horizon, keeping an eye on the faint moon in the twilight sky. The moon has long been my connection to Nana — the midway point for the distance our love would travel for one another. “Love you to the moon...” she would say before I jumped in with “and back, always.” Hours before Nana passed away, I noticed the sliver of a moon competing for attention with the colorful evening sky. I walked into her hospice room and quietly described the scene, and added that the moon was “tilted on its side and ready to catch rain water.” She used to walk outside and say funny little things like that, so I thought she’d enjoy this update from the outside world that she hadn’t seen in 5 weeks. But that October evening, she didn’t respond and...
