Dear Nan,

Thank you, no, really, really, really, and wholeheartedly, thank you - not just for all those Ice creams after the many Sunday roast's you made, or the added sprinkles you conjured up suddenly to go with it. No, my dear Nan, thank you - for actually doing nothing significant for me in my life, but for only just simply being you. 

However, dearest Nan, until only now, I realised, just how much I really did love you! It was while I cried, out of the blue, as I was hearing the news you were going in those few days prior.

Nan, you eventually did die, as they predicted, but right on this day, right smack bang on my birthday - a birthday you may well have forgotten by then, but did once too share this joyous day with me, well, as a phone call from far away saying 'happy birthday', too, me!

No, dear Nan, I learned to love you because you sat and watched the world go by while inside of your little cave. You watched the TV and said very little about the world's problems, and did very little to solve them too. You did say on occasion that this prime minister didn't look right, or that woman was wearing something unacceptable.

But Nan, oddly enough you did in some way, solve the world's problems.
Well, in a way, you didn't let them get to you, and you actually never really added to them either. Nan, you humbled yourself, humbled yourself into a nobody that counted, because you never did strain, or tarnish anyone, or violently attest, or demonstrate, or rebel, or commit a complete and immoral wrong - in a now globalised world where we're all still 'in search' of that right way to morally think, act, and still do good for each other.

Though Nan, damn it, you waited, and you waited with despair, to finally die. I remember, seeing it through your old and tiring eyes, like on one of my last visits, those eyes were like mine too Nan.
 But, hey Nan, don't worry,  I hold onto it all sometimes too, I hold on 'in despair' of this world, and life, through my own very eyes, but, I've learned to let my eyes shine even more brightly, even on the more 'darkest' of days.

Nan, when you die, they say, the despair dies with you, but, it could always then carry on again with you, or in your soul I mean. It could put you back somewhere like here on earth again. Perhaps, what I really saw what was similar between us was this great pain. I felt too what you were feeling as it 'showed' me what I didn't want anymore, or wanted to carry, the pain and despair that feels the weight of all our sorrows, wounds, and burdens. 

Oh, dear Nan, you may have lived and eventually died with despair but I've learned from it all now, thus so far. That in life it's not to die alone as like the way you have done.  I've learned dear Nan, I've learned to forgive myself and to act out better in my despair. To be able to press the 'cancel' tab on it more and more as well. I've learned to just simply remember (and to find) only what joys this life offers me. I've learned to endure all these sufferings. I've also learned to accept this great deep despair as one of life's simple unjusts, but also in its rare and paradoxical perfections as well.

And finally my dear Nan, how shall we meet again someday?