blindsided.

Death has a way of sneaking up on us, and no matter how many times you experience it, it never becomes easier to deal with. In actuality, I think it only becomes harder. My grandma, my sweet sweet grandma, passed away yesterday. She was found on her living room floor, in the dark, on Monday night, with a bad brain hemorrhage. By 3:30 am, she was brain dead. After receiving an early morning phone call from my dad, I drove home to Detroit, tears leaving spots on the inside of my glasses the entire drive home. I sat in the ICU at the hospital with my family, my grandma's pastor, and her best friend of 62 years for hours, sharing stories of the love she had for all people and for her Lord and Savior. Anytime anything came up in her life, she said, "I need to have a talk with God about this one." Every time I spoke with her, she told me that she had her church praying for me and my friends and my school. She had a memory like no one I have ever met before. I could sit in my grandma's living room for hours while she told me stories about her childhood: going to kindergarten in Grand Rapids, spending summers at the Lake House, riding the Greyhound bus with her dad. She even wrote a book that retells almost every memory of her life. I want to be remembered as a woman just like my grammy-- one who asks questions and truly listens to your answers, one whose God is number one all the time, and one who loves and loves and loves all people.

There is no way to describe what it is like to watch someone die, other than to flat out say what happened. While I know my grandma's soul was already with her Maker when I arrived at the hospital, her body was still being kept alive with machines, and we sat, holding her hands and kissing her cold forehead, all morning and afternoon. My sister, Natalie, sat in a chair, held grandma's hand and stared at her. My dad held her other hand, whispered, "You were a great mom. Thanks for everything." My mom stood beside my dad, rubbed his back, laid her head on his shoulder. I sat on the edge of the bed, laid my head across her lap. The doctor came in and unplugged the machines, and we sat and looked at my grandma and watched the screen next to her bed; watched her heart rate fall: 55, 54, 53, 46, 29, 23, 0...
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At the beginning of October, I lost my friend Sarah to a tragic accident in Grand Rapids. She was in town to do something she was passionate about: she was invited to show her photography as part of an ArtPrize exhibit. She had invited me to go see, since I live in the city, but I wasn't able to make it since my parents were in town the same day, and I was visiting with them.

I was able to see my grandma on Thanksgiving. As I dropped her off at home she said, "I hope I get to see you again since you're here for a while." I never made it back over to her apartment.

It is so easy to get lost in the guilt of not seeing the people we love one last time when we so easily could have had the chance. And it's so easy to get caught up in holding onto the bodies that people leave behind. Throughout these last two months, and due to the loss of two people I love, I have truly realized that we have something SO MUCH GREATER to look forward to. At death, we step into a life bigger and better than anything we could even imagine in this life. While we are here, though, we have the chance to bring a little bit of Heaven to earth, just like Sarah and my grandma did.

lasting impression.

I love returning home. It's nice to feel well-loved and to receive hugs endlessly. My friends back home have so much love to give, and I return with open arms, excitedly and selfishly receiving it. I get picked up and twirled around in long embraces, and I sit on living room floors laughing for hours as my friends make bad jokes and dumb faces and poke fun at each other. I stay up way too late wreaking havoc and going on adventures. My Detroit friends love concerts and will attend them at any cost, and they aren't afraid to be in the center of the crowd. I thrive on their energy.

Back home, I have a family whom I can play Scrabble with every night, a mom I can watch House Hunters with and never get bored, a sister who is hard-working and big-loving, her boyfriend who loves her even more than she loves me, and a dad who can answer any question I could ever think to ask him. I have grandmas who do nothing but serve and share stories of growing up.

It is nice to go home.

On the other hand, the life that has fallen into place for me in Grand Rapids is better and bigger than anything I could ever hope for. My friends here love the outdoors even more than I do. We camp and visit cabins up north and sit outside on nice days. We make a point to see each other on most days, whether that's playing trivia or watching 'How I Met Your Mother' or drinking local beer at one of our favorite bars or going to church or having fall fun or just sitting at a coffee shop doing work like we are now, in this moment. Every one of them is determined and driven and has a huge heart for people. They are doctors and engineers and social workers and nurses and teachers.

Furthermore, I have friends and family all over the world whom I love. How blessed I am to have loved ones I can visit in Chicago, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Florida, India, England, Colorado, Indiana, New York, etc. etc.?

The love I have in my life is the kind that makes my head swell; like that feeling you get when you sit on a back porch with friends on a cold night and inhale the smoke from a cigarette.
This is the kind of love that I want to brag about to everyone I know, and I can't say I'm sorry for being so proud of all the people I have in my life that I love so much.