Missing texts

 It's going to take a long time before I don't miss being able to write to Char.  There were so many things I wanted to tell her about our trip to Santa Barbara, for example.

One thing was about granddaughter Brianna.  I haven't really seen her the last few times we have been to Santa Barbara.  As a teenager, she preferred to stay in her room upstairs than mingle with the visiting relatives.  So when I saw her on this trip, at first I didn't recognize her!  She looked so different (though in this picture there is no doubt that she is Tom's daughter!).  That made me feel sad because it meant that I had lost all connection to her (and she didn't talk to me at all this time around).  Char had such incredible relationships with her grandchildren and it made me sad that I don't have that.

The good thing, though, was that what with when we were in Santa Barbara in July, and on this trip, I had a good visit with Lacie, who previously had ignored me.  We had matching pants, for one thing (lol), we played cards and when I was leaving to go home, she ran outside to hug me.  Now THAT was a novelty and made me feel very good.

There were other things I wanted to share with Char, mostly how "old" I felt in Santa Barbara.  Knowing how she had been feeling prior to her death and the things she told me about how her body was failing, I wanted to share with her how I felt.

If I was lucky, I might have seen her twice a year in the past few years because we lived so far apart, so I won't miss seeing her, but I sure will miss our emails and texts.