Today would have been your birthday, except that you died on the first of June last year. I still have several potential birthday cards for you. Every time I saw an unusual or especially beautiful card or small gift featuring poppies I would buy it and hide it away until your next birthday. I'm fairly sure everyone else in the family did the same.
Grief is a strange creature; I expected to feel sad today, but instead I just feel numb because I can't remember your voice. I can see your face in photos any time I care to look, but all the little things that made you real escape me.
I've tried to bring you back to mind by wearing my poppy jewellery and a poppy-red top, listening to the songs you taught me and carrying around the solid perfume compact you gave me so many years ago (I haven't worn perfume for over a decade, but it still smells the way I remember) but it's not the same as a real, vivid memory.
So I am glad I wrote this post when you were still physically around. The fact that you were no longer the person I both adored and occasionally found exasperating shocked me and made those memories all the more precious. It gave me a reason to record them somewhere.
So anyway, Happy Birthday Nanna. I miss you. I hope you'll be pleased that I kept myself busy today enjoying my beautiful boys, two of your many great-grandchildren, because I appreciate them so much more having lost someone I love. Having lost you.
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