It's All About the Journey

It has been a whirlwind whole month. I miss my Nanny every single day. It's like she's just everywhere. I found a reading log from kindergarten when she'd read books to me. Her handwriting was so beautiful. My Mama got her handwriting. I got her ridiculous sneeze. One of the books had an asterisk in the margin and a note that read "Very good book." So if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, the children's book "Once When I Was Scared" is suddenly on my reading list. Any book rec from her was always solid gold. Which takes me back to the reason that I'm going to reread that other book she was so fond of. More on that later. Everyone believes that my love for words must be innate. That's fully inaccurate. I loved words because she loved them loudly to me. And in her things we found all manner of scraps of badly-written adolescent poetry and angsty musings. She kept all of that. She loved my words. Oh, I miss her so. It's never occurr...

These are her flowers. From the day I heard that song in 2017 or something sitting in my living room with my preordered vinyl copy of Purgatory , it broke my heart. It broke my heart because I knew that it was my Nanny's song.  "I will follow you to Virgie although it hurts me so to lay to rest that mountain beauty that the Lord's called home. And I can see her up in Glory. I can see her through the pines." Every line of that song tore my heart out from the day I heard it. I couldn't listen to it. I knew the day would come that I would have to make that drive to the mountains to lay to rest our own mountain beauty. It was rotated through so many of my playlists and this version would come through often. He'd say "This is, uh, Follow You to Virgie" and I would say every time "No the hell it's not" and skip it. I couldn't hear it because I'd cry flowers for her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udNmEEfCcUM When I got the news, I wa...