To My Newest Guardian Angel,
It’s been a month without you, and not a day goes by when I don’t think of you. I see a picture of you or I think of a memory and I immediately get sad, but then I remember the fact that you truly are in a better place. I don’t want to remember you by the things you left behind: an un-opened DVD of Cinderella that you never got the chance to watch, the cane that’s in the exact place you left it, the housedress on the back of your chair you sat at every night at dinner. I don’t want to think of you and be sad, I want my mind to automatically go to the good memories and the things that you leave with me forever. I want my mind to go to when we sat one Saturday night watching “Gilmore Girls”, you teaching me how to knit while I explained the plot line, the time that you told me stories for two hours, making yourself laugh so hard you couldn’t breathe, or when you came to my final performance of “The Nutcracker” and started crying when I came offstage, making me cry ten times harder. You are one of my most significant influences and that’s how I’m going to choose to remember you, by how you’ve made me who I am and how you’ve created our entire family from nothing. You are what you leave behind, which is a big, loud, close, Italian family that loves each other and loves you. Yes, death is an incredibly sad event usually meant to dwell on, but life is infinitely more vibrant and happy, which we should celebrate rather than mourn. I’m not going to see you in how you passed away, instead I’m going to see your smile, I’ll hear you attempting to speak English because you know I can’t speak Italian, I’ll see you tearing up when we gave you a framed picture of the whole family for Mother’s Day. Of course we all think you were taken too soon, but we also know that you’re in a better, happier place where you can be with your love and look down on what you two have created. And I assure you, we’re all going to be ok and we’ll never stop loving you no matter what.
I’ll say the same thing I said to you the last time I saw you: I promise I’ll see you again soon.
Love,
Allie