A creative and fellow poet friend of mine Ariel sent me this journal prompt that I had to spend a whole day thinking over before I decided to write about it.

The prompt: If you walk into a room with everyone you’ve ever met in it, who would you look for?

Honestly, this was hard because I felt like if I chose just one person, those who are close to me would feel some type of way if they weren’t the ones I chose 😭 And I didn’t want to start a riot or anything about it! But when I really started thinking about it, the first person who came to mind was my Nana, who passed in 2011.

The fact that it’s already been ten years since her passing is crazy; it feels like it was only last year or a couple of years ago. And while I only visited my Nana a few times before she died, she had such a major impact on me to the point where if I see or hear something specific, I automatically think of her. Like, Coldstone ice cream; that’s an immediate memory of my Nana that I have because she used to collect recycling in order to get money to take us there.

Besides the fun and sweet memories of my Nana, now that I’m older, I’d want to look for her in a room full of people I’ve met because I’d want to hear her perspective on life and the world. I feel like I was pretty young to have deep conversations with her about things, although she would talk to us always about kindness, having fun, and fun facts (because of reading the back of Snapple bottle caps!).

I just wonder what my Nana would say about the world today, ten years after her death. How would she feel about where I am in my life? What would she think about how our family has turned out? What kind of advice would she give me now as an adult?

It breaks my heart to think of how quickly time has flown by, and how much of that time has been spent without my Nana here. I can only wait in anticipation for when I’ll get to encounter her after this life.

Mishy 🦋