Fifty two weeks to a year. Seven days to a week. Twenty four hours to a day. Sixty minutes to an hour. Sixty seconds to a minute.

Three hundred and sixty five days to a year. 8,760 hours to a year. 525,600 minutes to a year. 31,536,000 seconds to a year.

26 Years, 10 Months, 8 Days, 8 Hours, 49 Minutes of my life that I could call my Nonna mine.

I meant to write and post this over a week ago on the anniversary of her death.
The anniversary of her death.
Her death.

Sometimes it's still not real to me. And perhaps that why I have been avoiding this post...because the reality is all at once acceptable and horrifying. After so much time has past, I still don't know how to embrace the inevitable.

I was sitting with a friend on my porch while I was home from work sick last week and we were talking about signs and visitations from loved ones already passed. During our conversation, a chickadee - his grandmother's favorite bird - kept flitting in the branches of a nearby tree. Moments later a cardinal came and my friend was convinced it was my Nonna. While I don't know one way or another, I do know that her love and the life in her spirit continues to live on. I believe very strongly in the spiritual realm and I know that there is so much which we do not understand.

Case in point: I had a dream about her on Saturday night. I was in Buffalo sitting on the front porch and Nonna walked out. I knew that it wasn't really her, merely an apparition. But, I told her that the one thing I wanted was to just sit with her and hold her hand. And that's what she did. She also told me some things that I wish I could remember specifically, but it was basically about how much she loves me.

In the midst of horrible life decisions and not being anywhere near where I thought I would/wanted to be at this stage of my life, it is comforting to have her spirit remind me that I am loved unconditionally. However motivated I am to live a life that will bring her honor, I am also content knowing that no matter what I do or where I am, her love for me remains constant.

Each step taken; each breath inhaled; each tear to trace its way down my cheek, dissolve in the crevices of my face; each smile that deepens the lines around my eyes is known...is loved...is significant. And that makes all the difference.