Guarded

In blogging, I have tried to keep my family somewhat guarded.  I always try to leave certain tidbits of information off so as to not totally give away our exact hometown, the name of our church or school, our full names, etc.  Recently one of my kids' full names was put "out there", so as an experiment I googled it to see if anything would come up if someone were to search that particular name... When the results of my search appeared there was infact one mention of my child's full name on the world wide web.  I could tell that it was an obituary, and when I clicked on it, I saw that it belonged to my Granny.  I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me.  I burst into tears.  I was not expecting to see that...  

It has been a year and a half since she died, and usually I am okay when I think about that.  I remember her often - every single day, in fact.  And I miss her each time that I do.  But, I am not sad every time that I think of her.  I have guarded myself from thinking too far beyond the happy memories.  When I think of how much I miss her or how much I wish that my kids could know her or how I long to talk to her again - or hear her talk to me - I am still so very sad.  So, I guard myself from feeling that too often.

So today, when my guard was broken, I was startled.  I don't want it to be so.  I don't want to be sad.  I don't want to miss her.  I don't want her to be gone.  But there it was... in black and white.  She is.