I was oblivious to the blazing heat just outside the windows. On the right we passed an open field. Tall, lush crabgrass gently swayed side to side as a woman played catch with a golden retriever. To my left, the skyline of Boston sat in the shadows behind the late afternoon haze. The sun perched in the distance, a perfectly round glowing orange medallion. Soft pink clouds cushioned the sky around it, as if to showcase its brilliance.

I had never seen a sunset like this since we moved here. Never. Not like this one. And somehow, in that moment, as I sped away from Logan airport leaving Dadisodes behind, I knew.

For a moment, the wind ceased, the grass stood still, and the world was silent. In that moment, I just knew that the world was about to lose an incredibly special person.

As soon as I returned home from the airport, I phoned Dadisodes to say goodbye before his take off. But through his trembling words, it was clear he was too late.

His grandmother passed away before he even had a chance to board his plane to see her.

Hours before he had received a phone call that his grandmother was unexpectedly in the hospital and suffering kidney failure. It had only been a week since we last spoke to her to share the news of Babisodes 2.0 over the phone.  She seemed to be doing fine, but now the doctors were warning that she would probably not make it through the night.

I bought him the first flight out of Boston in hopes that he could be by her side in her final moments, so that she would know how much she is loved, so that he could somehow say goodbye.

But he never made it.

Despite her declining health in recent years, this was all unexpected, and far, far too sudden.  Now he is struggling, we are struggling, not only with the loss of her, but also with finding a way to cope.

We hope that she knows how much we wanted to be there, how much she means to us, and how much we love her.

Although she is not my biological grandmother, in the past 7 years, I had grown to love her as if she were.

She embraced me in a way that no one else in Dadisodes’ family ever had.  She was a prolific writer, with a gift for storytelling, and wrote me more letters than any person in my life. Perhaps that was the glue that bonded this young Chinese girl with a seasoned all American woman.

Her handwritten envelopes will be missed on our doorstep. But no more than the sound of her breaking voice saying, “I love you” over the phone.

She is the only family member besides Dadisodes and Babisodes who has ever said those words to me.

As Babisodes runs squealing throughout our backyard blissfully unaware, I cannot help but wonder how the world can so easily move on; how inside our home time stands so still as our hearts sit heavy with little will to budge.

I like to think that part of grandma lives on in Babisodes. At least I hope, because I am unsure if her young mind will hold on to the memories they created together.

Perhaps it is her strength that will one day pull us back outside, where the wind continues to blow and each day offers a setting sun.