It’s been 13 years since I last saw my Mamaw outside of a dream.

My father’s mother, a lovely, spunky, and endlessly kind woman name Bonnie Sue. When I think of her, I smell coffee and I hear 90s country music. Her raspy, jolly laugh, fills my head, and I feel the firm grip of her warm hugs.

She lived right down the road from me, a simple bike ride away. My childhood was filled with her love, which was expressed through chocolate ice cream cones, games of “Old Maid,” and front-porch bird watching. Nothing felt more peaceful than swinging on her porch swing in the springtime.

As much as I cherish these memories, something about them always breaks my heart — and that’s the fact that they stretch no further than age 13.

This is what’s hard to stomach now that I’m 26 years old. It’s thinking about how I was always just a child when I interacted with my Mamaw. I never got to discuss college with her, introduce her to my fiancée, or show her my brand-new vehicle that I bought with my own money.

That’s the incomprehensible reality of death. All the landmark life events that I know she would have loved just slipped right on by without her.

And that’s not even to mention the smaller things I wish for, like taking walks with her on warm days after I get off work.

I am blessed beyond belief, but when I think of what I wish I had, it’s this: getting to know my Mamaw at the age I am right now.

I want to ask about her favorite songs. I want to hear so many stories that I know we just can’t access anymore. Every time my Papaw tells me a new story about him and my Mamaw, I cling onto it like it’s a brand-new book excerpt I’ve never read before. As a human, this is the closest I’ll ever get to hearing about what it was like to be my Mamaw.

Sometimes I wonder what she was like when she was also 26. I wonder how many of her traits have made it down the line to me. I wonder what she’s proud of me for and what she could have helped me do better.

All things considered, though I only got to know my Mamaw through a child’s eyes, there were certainly times that my adult self traveled time and peeked through.

Like after her cancer diagnosis, when I talked to her until she fell asleep holding my hand. Although she was sleeping, her grip felt as firm as it did when she’d hug me all those years before.

I saw her through adult eyes when she told me she was trying so hard to fight to stay because “I was so young” and she “didn’t want to put me through even more after my Poppy had just died.”

I saw her through adult eyes when I overheard the home health nurse tell my family how many times she should be breathing per minute, so I began to silently yet religiously time her breaths myself.

The woman I am now peered behind my child eyes and grieved for what I would never know — planting flowers together, dairy-free chocolate ice cream cones (thanks to my newfound lactose intolerance), and watching The Golden Girls with her and my fiancée, Shaina.

These are the moments I’d give up all my material possessions for.

Mamaw, I know you’re still here with me, and I’ll never stop feeling your love. But what hurts me the most is not being able to give that love back to you.

– Noel