This has been an extraordinarily hard week. For the country, for Orlando, and also for our entire family. This week we said goodbye to the matriarch of my husband’s family, Grandma Johnson. She has been someone I looked up to for almost 20 years, and I am so happy I was lucky enough to get to call her grandma. 
My older two have long adored their great-grandma, but my heart especially aches for my little one, Grandma Johnson’s mother’s namesake, who was only just beginning to get to know her. Though I can never replace the joy of having her in our lives, I will try my hardest to preserve her memory and carry on her legacy. 
I have so many things she taught me that I want to be able to share with my kids, so it seemed fitting to pay tribute by sharing the bits of wisdom she has imparted upon me in the two decades I had with her. 
With that, I give you my list of things I learned from Grandma Johnson:
loss
On saying goodbye
I don't know when it started, but at some point I began to hate change. Change used to be exciting and I would look forward to the next new chapter that was just waiting to be written. But, somewhere along the way I began to love the story I was creating and starting new began to look less and less appealing.
I guess that's what they mean by putting down roots. And, I loved the roots that I was putting down. 
But, you can't control what chapters others write, and lately we've been saying a lot of goodbyes. Goodbye to a beloved step-grandma, to teachers and schools, to neighbors we adored, to numerous classmates who aren't returning in the fall, to grandparents who moved further away, and, most recently – to family we saw many times a week and were a huge part of the roots we had put down. 