She’s the kind of woman who you love to have as your friend.

She makes you laugh by telling you silly stories of how she got the guys at work to use vanilla glitter lotion because you know you’d have done the same thing.

She makes you know everything will always be okay.

She makes you cry because you share the same tender memories of when you believed the world was just as real as Pipi Longstockings and that Gilligan’s Island was real.

My grandmother would have been 86 today. A few years back she lost her battle with cancer. What was scary was it was sudden, within a week or so that we even had learned about it. What was a blessing was that we were able to be with her through it.

I feel so fortunate to have known my grandmother as the woman she was. After my mom’s divorce my sister, mother and I moved in with her and my aunt and lived the next 9 years together. My grandmother was an amazing woman who I do not know that I fully appreciated during those early years.