My room looks like any other sixteen year-old's room. There are stacks of CD's everywhere, there's makeup and hair products all over my dresser. There are rejected outfits on my shelves; my bed hasn't been made in weeks. My bulletin is going to fall off the wall any day now because of the amount of pictures on it and there's a flag pole and a rifle sitting smack in the middle of the floor.
However, there are two things in my room that isn't like the rest. If you were to go in my room and clean it up, you'd see them and think they belong to my younger sister; you'd think they don't belong there. But when I'd come back to my room and see it straightened and that they were missing, I would go berserk. The clean room I could deal with. It was the fact that my doll and my green and blue afghan were gone.
My parents always tell me that I'm exactly like my mom in looks and my grandma in attitude. At family reunions, I'm told nearly twenty times, "You look just like your mother," to which I respond, "Yes, you told me that last year." It gets a little repetitive, but you know, it's who I am. No one I know really likes to tell me that I'm like my grandma, however, mainly because she got a little catty every now and then. But you know what? That's who I am, too.
On Christmas of 1992, when I wasn't even a year old, my grandma gave me a baby doll wearing a lacy pink outfit. She had a bow in her brown-blonde hair and little white shoes and socks on. On the back, my grandma had written "To Kaila Mae, love Grandma C. Christmas 1992." My mom had put the doll in my room on my dresser. When I got older, I wasn't allowed to play with it, or even touch it; it was a special gift - my grandma had made the entire doll.
Later on in life, she made me an afghan that was the perfect size for my small six-year-old body. It was green and white and pink with little white people all over it. I always thought it was beautiful, and I always slept with it and used it instead of a sweatshirt whenever I was cold in my house.
When I was in the seventh grade and was twelve, my grandma got really, really sick. She had been struggling with cancer for years, and she was just now starting to lose the battle. We all knew she was going to die very soon, but I wasn't sure just how soon that would be.
On the day of a math standardized test, I felt sick. My stomach was knotted up, and I wasn't being my usual, social self. I was acting like there wasn't anyone else in the room; I was acting more secluded. My homeroom teacher asked me if I was alright and I said that my grandma was going to die really soon, and then I just felt a little weirded out by the situation. After I said that, I burst into tears. My teacher sent me to the counselor's office where she talked to me about how it was good that my grandma was soon going to be out of all her pain. She suggested that I write a letter to my grandma, telling her how much I loved her and how much I would miss her when she was gone.
I brought the letter home and told my mom that I wanted to mail it to her as soon as I could to make sure that she was going to see it before she died. My mom nodded, but didn't say anything. Later that night at dinner, my parents told me that my grandma had died early that morning. Before I wrote the letter. Before I was at school. Before I was even awake, she was gone.
I lost it then. I was crying and crying, and I didn't stop for hours. That night I fell asleep watching a star that usually wasn't outside my window. It was the biggest and the brightest out there, and I still to this day think it was my grandma watching over me, to make sure that I slept soundly and safely. I remember waking up only two hours later and looking out the window, but it wasn't there. I went to get a drink of water, and when I came back, the star was there again.
Now that I'm a junior and sixteen, I still cry for her. Just the mere thought of her makes tears come to my eyes. Just writing this article I was crying so hard at one point I couldn't see the screen.
I don't have any pictures of my grandma; she didn't like being on film. The only two things that I have to remind me of her are the doll and the afghan. Even though I've grown so much since I was six years old, both physically and mentally, I still have those two things that help me keep my grandma in my mind.
Without them, I don't know what I would do.
This is Kaila, going to get ready for guard practice.
(It's time like these, where silence means everything . . .)
