Good vibes requested. My grandmother is dying. Update: She passed away :(

[usaf-vet]

22. I HOPE that you have THIS to look forward to. There rarely is a day that my maternal grandmother isn't here with me.....

Let me explain. As time passes, the pain and sadness of her loss will hopefully be replaced by one or two great moments you remember about her.

In my case, one or maybe both of my key moments were when I spent days with her while my parents worked.

Often, I was dropped off before I had breakfast. So, my key "spark of memory" was because of breakfast. She never had an electric or gas stove. She cooked on a wood-fired cast iron-top stove. So often, she would make toast for me as part of breakfast. Because she also didn't have an electric toaster, she made a toast on the stovetop. Without the benefit of a timer to stop the cooking, my toast, more often than not, was burned at least on one side. She would then butter it or scrape the burnt away into the sink. So either way, I had burnt toast. It became the everyday way of what toast was.

When I got married, and we had all the cooking advantages, my wife was cooking breakfast one day early in our marriage, and the toast burned. I do not know how, but when she brought it to the table, she said, "I'm sorry, but the toast is burnt. Should I make another piece?" Before I could answer the question, tears flowed from my eyes and ran down my cheeks......

She asked if I was alright. I smiled through the tears and said Gramma L. is cooking this morning! Now, 55, married years later, I still eat burnt toast or almost anything because my wife warns me Gramma L. is cooking. Just the thought brings tears to my eyes as I write this.

I love you, Gramma!

I HOPE you will find the one or two sparks of memory of your grandmother that remain with you each time "your burnt toast" appears.

I won't tell a long tale about two other "sparks," but they are smells. One is the smell is of a seasoning, and the other is the smell of 3 in 1 machine oil.