Guest Post by Rissa: Struggling With The Loss of My Nana

So, I have been tossing the idea around with one of my best friends about writing down how the last 3 years of my life has been seeing that 3 years ago today we laid my nana (Marie) to rest. She was my everything, my support, my world. She had a long battle with colon cancer and she had a lot of other health issues which I wont get into as I don’t remember them all.

She would have been 79-years-old this year. Since we laid her to rest my life has been an uphill battle with my mental health, failed relationships, a huge move, and with covid it’s making everything so much worse. I am a mother of 3 in which I don’t have them in my care which is super difficult but I manage to deal with that better some days than others. What I can’t deal with is the fact that it’s so hard for me to not pick up the phone and call nana when something good happened in my life or when something is going wrong and I don’t want to talk to anyone else about it.

The first year after her death was the hardest as none of us knew how to handle the changes, especially my papa (Gary) he couldnt get rid of any of her stuff, he couldn’t move out of their apartment, he didn’t even know how to pay the bills. But he figured it out with some help from the family and his neighbor. And once we somewhat moved past the fact that she was gone we started to deal with the grief of the situation because she was honestly the glue that held our family together and in the first year of her being gone there was a lot of falling outs, blaming and accusing each other and saying that the only reason I wanted to be apart of my girls lives is because Nana was gone… No It wasn’t that at all but that’s what I got told.

Unfortunately, it was my parents that were keeping the girls from me. I had a full time job, I was paying child support. I was visiting with my kids when ever I could but somehow I was still in the wrong.

Oh well, I never gave up trying to be the best mom I could be until this year when covid struck. Now I haven’t been able to go see them or buy them stuff because, well, money is hella tight.

During the first year I finally told my ex-husband that I couldn’t deal with his bullshit anymore and that I wanted him to just leave me alone and forget that I ever existed. Which, to my surprise, he listened and agreed. I met my fiance back in 2018 and he’s been such an important part of my journey, the struggles of daily life and the terrible times that I deal with the best way possible when it comes to death dates or birthdays. But he had never once told me that my feelings are not validated. I have been adding yellow roses which are her favorite to a vase every year that she has been in heaven but it never seems to feel like I’m doing enough to keep her memory alive.

Thanks for reading!

Rissa ❤🥰