I saw her in a dream. I woke up with my heart beating just as fast as if I had just finished a 100m dash sprint.
I saw her standing at the top of the stairs, in a red long cardigan, something she wore often. I don't remember what she said, but I remember smiling soon afterwards.
Tears are coming down my face as I write this, trying to type as fast as I can while remembering the details.
I want to close my eyes and continue this dream. The images are already fading, but I remember her. I miss her. Her touch, her smell, the way she held me tight. I miss her so much.
I write to remember. To never ever forget. To never hold back on things I should've said. To release. To feel. To share and give.
I woke up with tears coming down my face. With a smile. I'm writing to remember that it's okay to feel.
This post was originally written on 11/21/13 after a nap in between shifts. It’s dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Nelly Mercier Rigaud, who passed from Alzheimer’s on 11/21/01.
I spent this weekend watching food documentaries on Netflix: Forks Over Knives which I’ve watched multiple times already, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and a couple “Chew On This” TED talks. I’ve already pretty much accepted the fact that processed foods are not-so-slowly killing us, and I also contemplated that this might have been the trigger to my grandmother’s disease.
I remember a few years ago my father telling me stories on how he never knew of cancer causing illnesses as he was studying medicine while in Haiti. A country where the majority of the food was natural, there wasn’t a specific labeling of “organic” because, well, everything that people consumed came from the ground or animals that weren’t fed junk. It wasn’t until he did his residency in the U.S. that cancer and other diseases like Alzheimer’s were beginning to pop up in his studies and practice. Putting these two places and situations in context, it doesn’t take a scientist or a genius to figure out that eating clean/non-processed foods will probably help to prevent these autoimmune diseases.
Just some food for thought.