My grandmother died on March 12, 2012, and it almost surprises me how much she still creeps up in my everyday life. I'm always thinking about her or remembering something small about growing up in her house. When I was driving home over the weekend, my iPod was on shuffle and Schubert's Ave Maria started playing, and I started to cry because she loved that song. The other day at work, I got a copy of the Senate newsletter that had a group picture of us interns on the first day as the back cover, and my first thought was to get an extra copy for Grandma because she would want to put me up on the fridge.

Growing up, I easily spent as much time at Grandma's house as I did at my own house. Last summer at senior week, when I got drunk for the third time ever, I cried and sobbed for no reason other than that I was talking about how much I loved her, and she wasn't even sick yet. She was such a strong figure in my life, she had always been there for me, for 18 years. When I go home, I always want to stop by her house and see her, tell her about how I got good grades in my first year in college, tell her about my job and how much I love working in DC. I want to tell her how much I miss her, and how much I love her.

My friends think I'm crazy because I make 'jokes' about Grandma, and about my aunt who died the summer before my senior year in high school. I don't do it because I think it's funny, I don't do it because I'm some kind of horrible person. I don't know how else to cope with it. A friend will say something about their crazy grandma, and my first thought is 'my grandma's dead' and that's the first thing out of my mouth, too. It comes out as a joke, but I just don't really always know how else to talk about it. I can tell stories about her and I can remember her, but it's just so hard. I'm always making smart-ass comments about everything else anyway, so slipping something in about the people that I miss is my way of keeping them around for myself, I guess. It's not a joke, not really. I just don't know how else to deal with it.