For Beloved Neni

Today my beloved grandmother, was buried. Yes, that's her as a young woman in the photo above. I was not by her side as I had hoped to be, but far away across an ocean in another country. Nonetheless, she had been constantly in my thoughts and I know she is now both at peace and watching over the family like an angel. I loved her so much and she me. I know she loves me still, as I do her.

She died a day after the exact Saturn-Uranus opposition on February 6, her Virgo Sun weighed down by the great malefic, and opposed by the liberator in Pisces. Meanwhile, Jupiter was bearing down on my mother's own natal Aquarius Moon, so I had known for some time that Granny's death was a distinct possibility this year.

The last six-and-a-half years had been an endless torment for her, leaving her bedridden and utterly dependent after a heavy stroke - a stroke that had reduced this elegant, always gracious and self-sufficient lady to a withered husk of herself, covered in weeping sores from the terrible skin condition she developed in the last two years of her life, her left hand shrivelled into a permanent sickle shape, both it and her left leg paralysed.

Now she will no longer slur her words, or endure long hours trapped in her bed or sit hunched in her wheelchair; nor will she have to brace herself for the daily ordeal of eating, brushing her teeth, or having her hair untangled from its knots.

Instead, I know the celestial door has opened to her soul and she, once more a beautiful young maiden, is free to step across the threshold into the light and ageless love that has been waiting to welcome her back from the day she was born. I know this not in a sentimental way, but as a simple truth of my heart.

Darling, immortal Neni, I love you and I know you will never leave me again.