A little rememberance is nice...

Happy February vacation! We're getting ready to go off to Florida, where hopefully the temperature will warm up enough that it will feel like summer. I'm looking forward to so many aspects of this trip - getting away, being someplace where it doesn't snow, spending time together as a family, seeing old friends. What's nagging me a little bit about this trip is that there's going to be something missing. Or rather, someone. My grandma.

As a kid, every year I would spend my spring vacation with my grandparents in Florida. I'd get on the plane here in NY and they'd meet me at the gate in Florida, and I'd spend one or two weeks there, swimming and enjoying the warm weather. When my grandpa passed away in 1992, I went down after to spend time with my grandma. The last time I was down there was for her 90th birthday, 8 years ago. She was just getting better from being sick and in a rehab center getting ready to come home. Somewhere over the 6 weeks following her birthday, something happened. She passed away on March 2, 2002.

I haven't been back to Florida since that trip, but since we haven't seen my grandma-in-law in awhile, we decided to visit. Since my grandma passed away, we kept her apartment, mostly because it didn't pay to sell it. So that's where we're going to stay, instead of invading my grandma-in-law's one bedroom apartment with our party of four. And that's where the anxiety is. How can I stay in that apartment, her home, without her?

Although I'm looking forward to this trip, it's going to be weird. Only time will tell, and as we get closer to leaving, the anxiety grows. But so does the excitement, because a part of me feels like maybe I'll feel a sense of peace when we're there, like she's still there in some capacity.

In the meantime, this photo of my daughter totally reminds me of my grandma, mostly because of the purse.