Missing Gramie Lately

I have been thinking about my Gramie a lot lately. As I have been working on losing weight, I think about her and her weight loss journey. She was a lifetime member of Weight watchers and was losing weight well into her sixties.

Yesterday, I realized she has been gone nine years. So many things have happened since she has been in my life. I sometimes wish she were here just to talk to. She loved to talk just like me and could talk to anyone. I remember driving through Tennessee this fall and listening to old country music, tears rolling down my face. She loved old country and the friendly people of Tennessee were her kind of people.

Sometimes I will smell double mint gum and think of her. She drove me everywhere in her big brown Cadillac that smelled like gum, leather and cigarette smoke. She was like our mom Monday through Friday, she took us to school and all of our activities.  She called me her shadow since many days I preferred to just stay with her instead of going home. She even took me to Kansas to see her mom for a month one summer, I loved when it was just her and I.

One of my favorite memories is sitting on her lap watching Scott Hamilton skate to Olympic gold. It gave me ice skating fever. We always watched skating together. She would buy me books on the Royal Family, often buying one for herself too. She loved to read and I often would read her books in the afternoons after school. She also long with my other grandma taught me to love soap operas. I don't watch them anymore but if I see the soap awards on, I always want to call her.

One of my favorite pictures. Graduation day 1994

Thinking of her strength in learning to clog in her sixties and losing weight has been inspiring me. I know she would be proud of the journey I am on and encouraging me every step of the way. Heck, she would probably have gone back to weight watchers with me. In fact, I had lost fifty pounds before her death and when she died is when I started gaining the weight back.

I just wanted to put it down in words, just for me. Sometimes I blog to get it all out and have something for myself to read later. This is one of those instances, its just for me to put it all down and get it out.