A STORY OF HONOR

My Nana Mel was an amazing lady, and I lost her two years ago. She taught me everything I know, and although she wasn't famous, and never wrote books, or made movies, or anything really, she dedicated 100% of her life to her family-she raised us to be strong, self-sufficient, and kind. She died of a very rare type of brain aneurysm from a stroke. Very sudden. Her death nearly ended me. I love my mother, of course, but no one was like my Nana Mel. No one. She and I had a bond that was unbreakable, immoveable, and never-ending. I feel it today as strongly as when she was alive. My Nana Mel was my world, and losing her started me on a path of self-destruction and grief like nothing I can explain, as I seriously didn't think I was gonna live through her loss. She was my guide, my light, my firm hand in the dark, the face in the crowd when I came home from college, the face over my head as she said goodnight to me, each night. She raised me, as much as my mother did. Hurricane Katrina forced my family to leave Louisiana and scatter. I ran to Nana Mel's in Missouri. And she, as ever, had the light on for me. Nana had one solid thing she instilled in me. Honor. She lived that word. She WAS that word. She felt it at her core, she learned the true meaning of it, and made it hers. That was her "one thing-" to live an honorable life. She instilled in each of her children and grandchildren that same sense of purpose-to find our "one thing" and live it. In her Honor, that is what I'm attempting to do.  I am attempting to write my first novel, about our family, and one of our earlier descendents, called, "The Honour of Blood." I'm nearly done but having troubles getting it completed due to multiple family illnesses, mostly mine, and I'm finding it difficult to get over this last bump to publication. I just want to see her story told; if it's the only book I ever write, then that is fine by me! But it is absolutely the most important thing I can do. If I have to publish it myself, I will. But to be able to finish our family's story now, is completely up to me...because I'm the last one left...the buck stops here, as Truman famously quipped.