At 2am I don’t want to be so wide awake.  It’s been exactly a year since our phone rang in the middle of the night; since she went home.

There was no card in the mail this year. No pages with her wisdom on them.  I so very much miss those things.  The tangible signs of the love of my Nana.  She would write about how she missed us, how proud she was, and how distance was a necessary part of doing what we’ve been wired for.  She’d always known who I would grow up to be.

I remember siting on the flight back to Slovakia and wondering “who will pray for us now?” because I knew that not a day went by without Nana mentioning us to God; and she had the bat-phone to God.  Nana never intended to inspire anyone. She simply lived and loved to the best of her ability.  She did ordinary things in extraordinary ways.  Even in death her plain confidence in God’s goodness never faltered: He had always been faithful.

Becoming dramatic or mournful is not something she would want me to do, so instead I think of how I am a part of her legacy and choose to share a few words that meant so much to her:

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I and you are you, and the old life we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other that we still are. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow…Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, in an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting temporarily when we meet again”.

Henry Scott Holland