Legendary

I'm not blogging these days.
I'm on strike.  I'm mad about the missing photos, mad that I can't get the darn thing to upload in order to back it up, and mad that I never thought, until I lost the pictures, to back up a blog.  I mean.  Isn't the internet totally safe and unchangeable?!  Hmm.
But.  Yesterday, my Nana died.  Even if the internet is as fickle, as changeable, as ephemeral as Life, I want to write it down here- my Nana died.
I haven't been able to write it anywhere else.  Or say it, or post it like people do now, or even respond to all the nice condolence messages from friends who heard about it from other people's postings.  I guess that means that it's upset me more than I want to admit.  Because it's more than I know she'd want.
Nana didn't want me to be upset.  She wanted me to understand what she had learned hard, and then lived hard, in her life.  Which is that we can choose to make this spin on the earth one great big party. So why not?  My Nana was colorful, irreverent, inarguable, and deadly beautiful even- actually especially- when her face became deeply lined with years.
Some people become legends after they die, but Nana was a living legend, as long as I have been around.  She lived a life that could not be written by the most imaginative author.  It's not just the amazing things she did- like riding the Mexican range as a cowgirl that could outride the cowboys, like becoming one of the first barnstorming female pilots, like getting a tattoo for her 80th birthday- it's the way she did them because she wasn't supposed to.  Like smoking for over 8 decades, eating MnM's and pink-frosted donuts for breakfast, yet living to be as healthy as an ox and sharp as a knife for nearly a century.
My Nana survived dark horrors and tragedies. She often told me that the thing about hard times is that even when they happen beyond our control, we have a choice about what controls us.  It is an absolute fact that nothing controlled Nana, but Nana.  She chose to be funny, full of laughter, and to do whatever made her happy without the slightest care to what anyone else thought about it.
As a kid we had lots of visits and trips together. I spent many Easters and some summer vacations at her ranch in Texas, and a memorable trip wandering through Mexico near her childhood home. As an adult sometimes I sit and marvel at the profound impact my grandparents have had on shaping the person I've grown to be.  If I take a step back and look at myself with really critical eyes, I can see so clearly.  They are all there.
Nana taught me my first swear words, in English and in Spanish.  She showed me that people will love you more if you are real, than if you try to fit some mold.  She told me how to have compassion without pity, strength without violence, and adventure without apology.  A former shoe model and the only person, ever, with small enough feet for me to share shoes with, she is the one who gave me a passion for heels and showed me how what you wear can influence the way you walk- not just across the room, but through the world. Nana herself was fond of blindingly bright colors, rhinestones, and jewelry for miles.
She wouldn't mind that it's not quite my style. She never wanted to be (and never could be) imitated.  But she wanted me to know that whatever my style is- in the way I dress, talk, walk, and live- it better be mine because it's me.  Period.   She wanted me to know that whatever I wanted to be or to do was ok, so long as I believed in it, in myself.  And she did too.  What a gift, I realize, to have had this woman, this gale force, at my back all my years.
When Nana was diagnosed with metastatic cancer a few short weeks ago, I got right on a plane and joined the family there with her.  We didn't talk about it.  It was like any other visit; we ate enchiladas and she told stories and we all laughed until we choked on our MnMs. There was a kind of denial, because nothing has ever stopped this woman.  She was unstoppable, and it seemed ostentatious for Death to presume to do so.  Legends never die.
Now it is like I have looked out the window each morning of my life, and there are the mountains.  Then yesterday, a mountain was gone.  Vanished.  How can it be?
I miss the inspiring majesty of it, the distant beauty and mystery of it, I miss knowing it was there if I ever needed a place to seek refuge.
I'm sad.  Of course, if she were, here, Nana wouldn't like it.  No.  She'd want us to have a party and celebrate her life, to talk about her and laugh, to find our fortitude and to move forward.  Knowing this, my cousin and I went out and had her favorite dinner- enchiladas and coronas- in her honor.  We told stories and we laughed.  We're sad because we can't help it.  But among all of us cousins, I've noticed a reverence for her, with a glint in our eyes. Even in mourning her, we can't be completely somber, because she's there in the back of our minds, finding something funny about the whole thing.
In my own children, I sometimes see a streak of feistiness, a wild display of individuality, an irrational yearning for adventure. I see fire in the green eyes of my daughters, the same green as mine,  the same as my Nana's.   Despite all the parenting books, the common sense, the better judgement, I find myself celebrating those moments.  They are how I know it is true, after all.  Legends never die.