My grandmother passed away today.  It’s the first grandparent that has died while I’ve been alive.  It was quite a good streak and I know it’s gone for good.  That’s how life goes.

To be honest, I’m kind of happy that it happened.  She was miserable.  She used all of her energy to let you know that she hated living in her nursing home.  It’s not that the nursing home didn’t treat her well, but she just wasn’t the kind of person who was content in such a situation.

As I travel up to Rochester, I know I will remember her not from the conversation I had this week on the phone or from the visit during the summer.  I will always remember her from a year ago and six years ago and fifteen years ago — the woman that I had conversations with and who could walk and was so smart.

The thing is, I know that I already said goodbye.  I’m not a super sentimental person who is caught up in such things, but I’m glad that I had that opportunity.

Today was a pretty magical day.  I woke up to snow.  It was an amazing snow storm.  It wasn’t cold enough for it to really stick, but the trees and roofs were starting to turn white.  I sent an email to work that I was going to be in late and I went for a walk in Audubon park with my mom.  I’ve never seen so much snow fall in New Orleans.  I often say that one of the things I miss the most about the north is the feeling when you’re walking on a really snowy day when sound is dampened and everything is quiet and peaceful.  I never thought that I would get that in New Orleans.

It was truly a marriage of snow and New Orleans precipitation.  I think it was as much snow as I’d ever seen falling in Vermont or Wisconsin.  The difference is it only lasted about an hour and a half and then switched to hail and rain.  It also feels weird that there is no sign of any of it now.  Perhaps it’s because our city was designed (well… maybe retrofitted… hopefully) to pump out water as efficiently as possible.  I don’t think we would ever have a mud season.  And thank goodness the streets don’t have a salt residue; they’re bad enough already.