I love my grandma, so it's always difficult telling people she

s dead. She was always in and out of the hospital, so it wasn’t as sudden. I had lived with her for about 7 years, so a little less than half of my life. She was always inspiring me to the best that I could be. She wasn’t the best English speaker. To be honest, she couldn’t speak a single word of English, so, when she had something important to say to me or vice versa, we would try to work around the language barrier by using hand gestures, facial gestures, sounds, I even tried to use Google translate but it wasn’t available in Somali . A funny story on that: I remember when she wanted a bag of chips but she didn’t know how to say it in English so she pointed at a bag of chips and started making crunching sounds with her teeth. It didn’t take me long to realize what she wanted, but it was hilarious.
What I really didn’t like about losing a loved one was the preconceive notions that came along with it. I thought that time healed all wounds, but, for me, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I thought that if I lost a loved one, I would go through an eternal phase of depression and darkness, but I wrong about that as well. I wish someone had told me that when you meet someone that special that inspiring, and they eventually pass, it’s hard not to feel anything but happiness because you got the chance to know them. Also, something I didn’t like about losing my grandma was that every time I tried to move on I would be reminded of her. It was as if everywhere I looked I saw her face. It was a tad creepier than it was depressing, but when I look back on her passing, I regret not having made more of an effort to get to know her.
Even though losing a loved one isn’t the happiest event that you could possibly go through, there are many things that I gained: I become stronger by realizing that life goes on, I learned how to accept difficult situations, I learned to live more fully and just be happy.