I don't know what to tell you, but i can tell you that I understand, kinda. I lost my Dad two months ago. Some days I'm fine and some days it still hurts a lot. He was always the one who protected me from Mom, but as he got older I wasn't able to protect him. He ended up in a nursing home with dementia and maybe a stroke. We'll never know because Mom just didn't notice there was anything wrong but there was.

He never got better. He would have good days where he was right there, and then there were days when he just didn't respond to anything. I do remember that, on the day they "celebrated" their 50th wedding anniversary, I was wheeling my Dad back to his room and I hugged him and told him I loved him, and he said, really clearly "I love you, too". It was totally awesome, but it was also the last thing I heard him say. We visited later in the year, and he was pretty unresponsive. Then in January he went to the hospital but they couldn't help him.

Hold on to your memories. You can and they are real. Your feelings are real, too.

Some days I don't miss my Dad much. I live in another state and I didn't get to see him often, so nothing in my daily life has changed much at all. And then I wonder if I really miss him at all. And then there are other days where he fills my heart and my mind and I'm really sad and angry and sad. I just try to take it as it comes. I feel what I feel whenever i feel it. That's up to me and it's mine and nobody has any right to judge me for feeling or not feeling.

I still have to deal with my mom. She's always wanted a good relationship with me and she'll never understand why we can't have that. I don't have any way to tell her what she did - it was years of abuse, small and large. I do my best to be patient and tolerant, but I'll just never like or trust her. She doesn't get to judge my grief. I know she'll never understand that, either. So I just do my best to keep my feelings out of her way, and to find other, safer places to feel and talk and think.

Maybe you can find someplace you can share with your Nan. It doesn't have to be someplace you went while she was alive. Maybe you can find someplace now that you could share with her and spend time with her and feel out loud.

I'm sorry for your loss.