Goodbye may seem forever

A good friend of mine told me today that you should celebrate the life of a loved one, not mourn their death. Although I'm not totally ready to embrace that theory yet, I need something to take my mind off of the sadness. I love my great grandma, she was an amazing person, and had one of the fiestiest German tempers of anyone I've ever met. I have so many good memories of her while I was growing up. So in an effort to focus on the happy times I will write a few of them here. Perhpas in the years to come I will be able to look back on this and smile and remember how much it helped me get through that first day.
Grandma Obie babysat my twin sister and I when we were little. It never failed that the second we walked in the door, and right before we left we would each get a lemon drop. It is because of her that I love those little candies so much. Grandma would always ask our mom's permission before giving us sweets and my sister and I were so proud of ourselves when we learned how to spell lemon drop by listening to her ask mom's permission. Our pride was short lived however, when we found out that "c a n d y" does not spell lemon drop.
She made us care bear costumes for halloween. She made each of them by hand, as she firmly believed that sewing machines were cheating. They had these huge heads with holes in the mouths were our faces showed through and "paws" to cover our hands and shoes. She even embrodiered a care bear symbol on the tummy of each outfit. I remember being so incredibly warm that halloween because those things were ridiculously well insulated heehee, but we were the only kids that didn't have to wear coats over our costumes that year. I still have my care bear costume, and one day I will be able to let one of my children wear it.
Her apartment complex had a game room. In the game room was a pool table that she would take us down to play with. We never got to use the cues (for obvious reasons that we were twins and sisters and would have used them to smack each other) but we had endless hours of fun shoving the balls into the pockets. And she would sit there with us, just letting us play as long as we wanted.
Grandma Obie always kept a big plastic molded bag...almost like a big plastic beach bag...full of toys in her closet in the apartment. There wasn't anything fancy in the bag, but those toys kept us out of her hair and out of trouble for as long as she would let us play with them. I still remember which closet door you had to go to to get the bag of toys.
My sister and I always called her Grandma Obie (her real first name is Martha and her last name is Oblander...but her husbands nickname was Obie so that's what she wanted us to call her). It always frustrated us so much that my cousins called her GG. We could never figure out why they called her that. It wasn't until we were about 7 or 8 that we realized that GG was short for Great Grandma, but we still didn't understand why they didn't just call her Grandma Obie like the rest of us. Hey I never said we weren't a tad self centered as children heehee.
There are a hundred other memories I could write down, a dozen more stories I could tell you about what she was like, and who she was. But those are the ones that always seem to come to my mind first. I am still sad that she's gone. She wont get to see either Chrissy or I get married, she wont be able to hold her first great great grandchild. All the things we had known she would always be there for will happen without her sitting there with us. I know she will always be watching over us, and it helps to know that she will still be there scolding us when we've done something wrong. That at least is some comfort. Things will get better, and it is nice to be able to smile some today. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier.