Missing Nana

I'm in the decade before the decade she left the world, and my world.... The world did not mark it, the world did not miss her (any more than it will miss me) but my world does--my world of sun-gold and ocean-blue, my own little world reading books while sitting like a happy little king on the porch of my grandparents' old house on the bay at Ocean City.... I read in gentle sunshine, I read while breathing pure ocean air and sometimes smelling a cake baking in Nana's kitchen and knowing I was safe, sure, alive.... I'm in the decade before the decade my Nana left the world, and as I near the time when--God willing-- I'll be with her again as the 40 odd years since she left my world compress: smaller and smaller time itself becomes, and freer and freer is my once lost soul....