I sat in the waiting room, preparing myself to see my grandmother’s dead body. I clenched the picture I drew for her, creating wrinkles in our stick figure bodies. The doors opened and it was time for all close family members to say goodbye 
before she turned to grey ash. The room was silent, but you could almost hear her voice, and the memories all came flooding back to me.
I almost wanted to tug on her and say, “Wake up Grandma!”
It was the smell that made me cry. I’d never smelled death before, but being in that room I could smell her bloated body. She was lying on a board waiting to be cremated. It didn’t look like my Nana. Her face was blue and her hair was white at the roots. My Nana always had freshly dyed hair. I took the wrinkled paper that was now moist from the sweat of my hands and put it in her pocket. I turned to my older sister and cried in her arms. I could feel my mother’s arms on my shoulders and head and then she grabbed me and cried harder than I’ve ever seen her cry before. I could feel her tears come through my shirt and run like a stream down my bare back while my snot dripped onto her shoulder.
Everything leading up to this moment didn’t feel real. Her absence hadn’t sunk in yet. Being with my entire family, it still felt as if she was with us, as if she was always in the other room, busy so I couldn’t see her. Before the crematorium, I often found myself wandering through the house, looking for her. Hoping that I could walk into her bedroom and find her watching the morning news, I’d climb into her enormous bed and cuddle up in a ball next to her with her arm wrapped around me. I would walk around the limestone house, searching for her to be bent over and pulling weeds with dirt on her face and on the knees of her jeans.
I’d yell, “Nana! Look at my bruise, it’s huge and yellow and purple and green!” All while running at her with a grin plastered on my face.
She would embrace me with a hug so warm that I could melt into her chest with her fragrance of rose essential oils coated on her cotton tee-shirt. I searched for her pear shaped body and dyed brown bangs. I searched for her patience and kindness and generosity woven into a woman who deals with clients, grandchildren, neighbors, and her own kids who couldn’t get along for the life of them. She was never there and never would be. No matter how many corners I turned with my eyes wide in search of my Nana, she was never there. I found her empty room, I found her clothes hung up, I found her shampoo, and hair brush, and toothpaste, and toothbrush. I found her flower beds wilted and covered in weeds. I found her pots and pans that she wouldn’t make anything less than wonderful with, but I couldn’t find her.
I used to sit in her kitchen and watch her cook. She did everything so gracefully and made it look so easy. I’d watch her layer her lasagna with mushrooms, olives, sweet potato and spinach, handfuls of cheese on every layer, slathered on tomato sauce made from scratch, and don’t forget the ricotta. I didn’t dare ask if I could help. I knew I’d only mess up her flow, so I would sit with my head on my chin and give her compliments of how fantastic everything smelled.
“To be a good cook,” my grandmother would say, “You have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating.”
A week before she died, she fell on her back. She was bent over the stove making breakfast for her grandchildren that were soon to be awake. My brother found her first. He came sprinting back up the stairs and told me to call 911.
“Nana fell. She hurt her back!” He cried and ran back down stairs.
She spent the rest of her days in bed. She was only sixty when she died. I never even thought of her coming close to death during those days.
“Your Nana’s sick with a bad back, but she’ll be better and ready to play with you in no time,” my mother would say.
She died without warning. There was no goodbye. She was there one day and then gone the next. Her skin was glowing and radiant the last time I saw her alive and then blue and rotting when I got to say my goodbye.