mother's day sadness

May 11, 2008 - 19:44 PM PST

So today is mother's day. It is the day that everyone is supposed to thank their mothers and all mothers for everything that they have done for them. Of course I do the call home to mom, but we both don't think about the one thing that is truly on both of our minds, my nanny aka my grandmother. She is the only person who I have ever looked up to. She had to deal with some crazy stuff. She moved to the US with her mom from italy at 17 and her mom passed away a year later. When she married her husband who none of us refer to as my grandfather was abusive. She went to the police and they told her that it was a home dispute and their was nothing that they could do. Eventually she divorced him and took care of four kids on her own. You think that this would turn her into a hard person, but it didn't she was the most caring and gentle person that I ever knew. She passed away in her sleep when I was thirteen. She was only 53, but she had alot of heart problems. You would think that thirteen years with someone would seem insignificant, but even now nine years later I strive to be as good a person as she was. Her last year on this earth I was having a hard time with puberty setting in and my mom told me that she was either going to send me to see a psychiatrist or I had to spend Saturdays with my Nanny. Those Saturdays were some of my best days of my life. She taught me Italian family recipes that no one in the whole family knows and she would listen. Not the usual okay honey leave me alone condescending listening, but the true 100% listening that you knew that she actually cared about what you were saying. To this day I have never met a person as wonderful as she was. I miss her especially on Mother's Day.