My hair was long, loosely curled, my gold-rimmed sunglasses sat on top of my head. I donned a denim button-up top, paired with my favorite white skinny jeans, and the leopard print Sperry sneakers that always cut into the top of my foot, but I wear them anyways.

My mother and I spilled into the lobby carrying on our conversation and laughter after a three-hour car ride together. We took our time finding a bathroom and I even treated myself to a white mocha at the coffee shop that served Starbucks to guests just inside the hospital.

I followed my mother who had been there days before to the elevator, which opened into a large sitting area with huge floor-to-ceiling windows, we cut to the left, made a right, and walked down the hall, and into her room.

I remember everything about one year ago today.

It was a chaotic greeting. One that we didn’t expect. There were nurses and a doctor. There were beeping sounds and she was fighting. Wanting to sit up, wanting to take the oxygen mask off, wanting to see a friendly face I had hoped, and maybe even wanting to understand.

I took one sip of that coffee before it sat near the window in her hospital room and there it remained.

Our world was flipped within minutes of greeting her. Just hours before, my Mom and I discussed the steps it would take to bring my grandmother closer to home for healthcare. My mom could be closer to her, and provide frequent and constant care. We didn’t know her body was failing. We didn’t expect the doctor to so blatantly tell us her state was unfix-able. We didn’t plan for that day to turn so hopeless.

I am pretty sure the initial doctor’s words and explanation of the dire situation at hand sank into a reality for me before they did my mother. Looking back it was like slow motion watching everyone in the room swirl around me as I looked at my grandmother in her bed, and watched my mother trying to process the words from the staff.

I felt sick. There was an immediate wave of nauseousness and I was scared to touch her, fearful that my touch may cause pain or propel something terrible to happen to her body.

But then, I looked at her hands. Her beautiful, tiny, soft hands. They were the hands that rocked me as a baby. The hands that scratched my back as I laid across her lap as a child. The hands that mixed the world’s best potato salad. The hands that buckled me in the car on weekend drives. The hands that wiped my tears when I poured out my problems. The hands that squeezed mine on my wedding day.

In the scariness of the room, the beeping of unknown machines, the conversations between the nurses, the various cords that hung from machines and draped across her body, it was her hands that I reached for and squeezed.

April 11, 2018, was the last day I touched those hands, looked into her eyes, whispered ‘I love you,’ kissed her rosy cheeks, and the last time I saw her alive to say ‘goodbye.’

I knew walking out of the hospital that day I would never again see the woman who I had loved so much, who had raised me like a second mom, and who I had admired since a little girl.

And, I wanted to say ‘I love you’ again. Just once more. Even after the painful goodbye and walk away, I contemplated running back to her and doing it all again.

But the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and big white puffy clouds waved to us as we sat numb in our car before driving away.

I remember everything about one year ago today.

Some days it feels like she left us yesterday, especially when I feel the sudden urge to call her and suddenly remember she is gone. Other moments, these 365 days feel more like years that we have been a part.

I remember everything about one year ago today, and I remember everything about her.

It is hard to forget someone so special and someone who impacted your life the way she did mine.

I never imagined life without her in it. In fact, I was naive enough not to think about what it would be like with her gone.

But here I stand. 365 days since I last saw her physically on this Earth, and while the pain from remembering everything about one year ago today lives on in my heart and head, I pray to never ever forget anything about her.