In memory of my grandmother

How can you miss someone you've never met?

I miss her. It's like I know her. My mother talks about her and she comes alive.

My mother tells me how she loved to shop. She had closets full of clothes she never wore, but she liked to find bargains. She was very chatty. My mother tells me, she didn't say hello when she called you, she just started talking. She was beautiful, and she had a great smile. She was young, and energetic, and vibrant. She would stop people on the street to say hello. Strangers did not remain so for long.

I wish I had met her. I think we would have been great friends.

She is forever frozen in my mind, an image from a photograph I saw of her. I thought about going to the cemetery, but that would be confining her existence to a plot of land. She was so much more than that.

I wish she was around now. I wish she could be at my wedding. She would have loved to meet my niece. And I would have wanted her to meet my children.

It's hard to think of what might have, could have been.

When my mother talks about her, it is like she is really here. But she is not here, and will not be here, until the coming of Moshiach.

Sometimes people talk about loved ones of theirs who passed away. I thank G-d have never been touched by death directly, so I couldn't really understand it.

But now I think I get it.

Today is her 25th yartzeit. Twenty five years ago the world lost a special person.

And even though I never met you, I miss you, Bubby Doris.