N8tivegirl

If I Could Call Heaven from Hey Grandma’s Porch

You would have been 60 this year.

We were supposed to be planning trips.

Laughing about our knees hurting.

Talking about gray hair and freedom and finally slowing down.

We were supposed to grow old together.

Instead, I find myself thinking about Hey Grandma’s porch.

That porch was sacred ground.

That’s where we told the truth.

That’s where your crazy little tee hee would rise into the summer air and wrap around everything heavy.

We sat there dreaming about the future.

About coming home for good.

You always said you wanted to move back home.

And you did.

Just not the way we imagined.

It’s been five years.

Five years without your voice.

Five years without our long, unfiltered conversations — the kind only sisterhood understands.

If I could make one phone call to heaven,

I wouldn’t ask about why.

I wouldn’t ask about timing.

I would ask them to transfer me to that porch.

I would say:

I miss you.

I miss being known the way only you knew me.

I miss the ease of sitting beside someone who shared my history and my hope.

Sometimes I like to imagine the universes running parallel —

a place where we’re still sitting there,

still laughing,

still planning 60.

But here, on this side of eternity,

I carry you differently now.

In quiet evenings.

In the women I love fiercely.

In the understanding that love does not end — it shifts.

So on March 3, I will sit still.

I will let the wind move like it used to on Hey Grandma’s porch.

And I will remember that sisterhood like ours does not disappear.

It simply waits on the other side.