Thirty

I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 months since my last post. Life gets in the way, regardless of how much time has passed.

Thirty years ago (1996), the year I turned 16 was a pretty messed up year for me. I lived in North Carolina for a while due to my dad being in the military, so we were pretty far from the rest of our family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc).

Outside of moving to Ohio, I was pretty excited to move closer to my grandparents once my dad retired, which happened during the summer of 1995. I was really close to my grandparents on my dad’s side, so I couldn’t wait to visit them now that we were only 10 minutes away from them.

Unfortunately, the Universe had other plans because roughly 8 months after we moved from North Carolina, my grandmother died due to health issues, and less than a month after that, my grandfather also died.

To put it nicely, I’ve never liked the holidays ever since. I don’t dread them, I just dislike them. I know that death is inevitable but that year really tested me and changed so much in my life before I turned 16.