Dear Poppy,

4 years ago today, at 7:56 pm, my family received a phone call from my grandma. She called to tell us that you were no longer breathing and that she believed that you were gone. And you were.

I remember that night. Dad and David went over to Grandma's house to take care of things relating to your death, and Mom went outside and worked in the yard. It was a Friday night, and I was online. I didn't know what else to do. If I had a social networking account at the time, I probably would have been on there. Instead, I received an e-mail from my friend Alicia which is partly why I could so clearly remember this night. I wanted to go to bed because well what else can you do after finding out that your grandpa died. But because Mom was outside, I didn't feel comfortable going to bed without anyone else in house. I wanted to talk to anyone about what happened, but other than a brief e-mail, I couldn't.

I remember going to your funeral. It was at the same church that Uncle Gordon's funeral and Great Grandma's funeral was at (the latter, I remember clearly you carrying her casket). We played Brad Paisley's religious songs before the funeral started. Mom played those for you very soon before you died. You seemed to enjoy them, and she told me that you wanted your crown, and that you said you were going to get your crown in the big church.

Before the funeral started, I remember reading A Midsummer's Night Dream. After your death, I began reading all of the time and no longer living in real life. I remember that as people spoke at your funeral, I realized how little I actually knew about my grandfather. I wish that you hadn't always been going to play golf. I know that you loved it, but I wish that you would have been around more. I wish I could have gotten to better know this great man that they called my grandfather. We drove for quite a while to get to your grave site with your ashes in the trunk of the car that you gave me....the car that had been your car. I remember once showing you how to work your tape player in that car. Mom had given you a jazz cassette, I think.

I remember stopping at an Arby's on the way to the cemetary. Once we got to the cemetary, Great Aunt Delores made a huge fuss about you being buried in the wrong grave site so the workers dug a new hole right in front of us. We left your ashes there and went home.

A few days later, I tried to return to a normal life. I went to Colonial with a few of the females in my youth group. I returned home only to find out that Jacob died. I was devastated and just cried.

To lose you and Jacob within two weeks of each other...it was too much. I couldn't handle it anymore, and I couldn't handle living because it was so painful. So I turned to reading. I am glad now that I only turned to reading. I read so much that summer because I couldn't do anything else. I could not face living because it was so painful. Finally, it got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I hadn't been able to cry in so long, and I needed to cry. So I got the book A Song for Jeffrey from the library, and I read that book, and I cried. And I cried. And I cried. It was what I needed to get the tears flowing again.

I struggled with regret for a while from the things left unsaid or undone while I knew you. The last time that I wrote a letter to you was in a notebook somewhere in my room. By writing it to you, I was finally able to release all of those regrets and give them over to God.

Honestly, my relationship with God did suffer after your death and after Jacob's death. I remember very clearly being so afraid to do the frog dissection in biology, and to this day, I wish that I hadn't. Even though I know that very clearly, nothing would have happened differently, it still really felt like by dissecting a frog, which had become to be known to me as Fully Rely On God and was associated strongly with my faith in God and how I was getting through this difficult time, it was destroying my faith symbolically. And part of me knew that when I was dissecting that frog...that that was it. That was the end. I knew that both you and Jacob were going to die. I didn't want to know that. I was still praying for a miracle. I knew that God was capable of healing...I knew very clearly that Jacob lived nearly 10 months longer than the doctors expected.

And Poppy, I still miss you like crazy. Memorial Day this year made me sad. You would always come over for Memorial Day, and even when you were really sick, you wanted to come over, but we all knew that that wasn't going to happen. I wish that I could have had more time with you. I wish that you didn't have to die of colon cancer. I wish that you would have just died in your sleep of old age. I wish that you didn't have to suffer.

I love you Poppy. I always have, and I always will.

Love,
Your granddaughter,
Anna