One thing that I know for sure is that I miss my Omi. She passed away over a year ago, just a few days before Christmas break. The last time I talked to her was a week before she died. Cooped up in a hospital bed for several days, they were sure she wasn’t going to make it, though she had fooled us many times before. My Mother called me from Omi’s hospital room and told me Omi wanted to speak to me. Omi said to me, “Hello Christina,” in that wonderful German accent that I loved, “I want you to have the engagement ring Opa gave me.” The rest of the conversation was blurred in tears and silent sobs as she told me not to cry and that she loved me. I told her to hang on just a few more days until I could get home, knowing deep inside it would not happen. I grieved that night, and the day of the funeral, but never truly came to terms with her death -- until today.

My parents sent me to “The German Store” this morning, to pick up a few things for lunch. “The German Store” is a little grocery that sits in the middle of a suburb of Tacoma. It was created for the German community that lived in Tacoma; most of them women married to military men stationed at Fort Lewis. My Grandmother was one of those army wives. One of many from the small town of Herzogenarauch or other such small towns in Germany who married American men and ended up here to live out their later years. “The German Store” is their little piece of home. It is the only place, other than the commissary, that one can get authentic German groceries. It was a store with two counters, one for meat, another for bakery goods and checkout, three isles that are sparsely supplied with German baking goods and candies, and a cooler filled with unsalted butter, lard, beer, wine, and bottled water.

I stood at the meat counter staring at the huge tubes of meat and thick slabs of cheese that filled the case. Many of the meats and cheeses I didn’t know the names of and probably never will. When my number came up, I ordered a pound of salami and half a pound of Havardi cheese. Moving on I acquired a few pretzel rolls, a salt roll for Dad, a small loaf of German rye bread and the all-important German mustard. At the register, a thought passed through my head, maybe Omi would like some leberwurst. But as quickly as it came, I remembered that she was gone. I left “The German Store” a little saddened but my grocery list complete.

On the way out, I paused at the coffee shop that shares the building with the small grocery. The sounds of chattering German women and smells of bitter coffee and sweet küchen reminded me of Omi’s house. I walked into the coffee shop on a whim, prodded on by the invisible hand of memories. I sat down at a sturdy round table that resembled many of the other tables in the place and ordered a piece of blackforest küchen. Twice the size of the grocery, the coffee shop housed almost two dozen tables, all the same thick wooded, round tables that would last through eternity. The chairs were of the same dark, thick wood with squatty legs and hard seats. The windows were covered with German lace curtains, giving it the feeling of an average German person’s home. Closer to the door, the lone counter stands, built of glass and metal, displaying the wondrous küchens made from old homeland recipes.

The tables were filled with aging German women, many who are the same age as Omi would be, many of them her friends. My mother told me that Omi used to come here every Saturday morning to have a piece of küchen, cup of coffee, and gossip with her friends. One time, when I was six or seven years old, Omi brought me here on one of those Saturday mornings. I didn’t understand what the women were saying, it was all in German. It didn’t care much though, the chocolate cake I got for breakfast was more important.

I could see Omi’s newly permed hair, poofed to perfection, the golden-brown color fading into hints of gray. Her bony-thin frame, scavenged by years of cigarette smoke and pneumonia, immaculately dressed in slacks and a sweater. On special occasions she wore a Hummel pendant on a long golden chain, a little girl with a kerchief caged in a gold teardrop. She was a fighter, my Omi, though most could not see it. She was trapped in her home, stuck in her recliner for many hours of the day. Leashed to an oxygen machine, her body was too weak to even make it to the kitchen. Most of the time we wondered and marveled on how she did it, living on ten percent of her lungs so for many years. Requests for a lung transplant were denied, as trips to the hospital became more frequent. Many doctors said, all those years ago, that it was unlikely she would make it a year, to never see her granddaughters graduate high school, to never see us marry, or really see us grow. She outlasted all predictions by five years or more, saw two grandchildren graduate, saw all of us grow.

Sometimes it seemed as if she would live forever, see me through college, medical school and more, see her granddaughters marry, have children and grow. All those times that we thought she was gone, she bounced back and suprised us all. It’s different now. She didn’t bounce back. I almost expected her to just re-appear this summer when I came back from college. I wanted her to be sitting on our deck with her Sprite and her pretzels, gazing serenely at the sunset on the lake. I wanted her at our family dinners on Sunday, stealing half of Dad’s beer, and wanting more mashed potatoes. I wanted her to be there to tell us the stories she told us a million times before, “When I was a mädchen I fell into a pond and everyone thought it was a chicken because all they could see was my white hair...”

I sat in the coffee shop for about an hour, reminiscing about Omi and the times we spent together. The piece of cake I ordered sat almost untouched, forgotten among the rushing memories. As slow tears coursed down my face, the memories finished their chronological path, ending with disbelief that she was really gone. I knew then that I had not finished mourning, I had barely begun. I had not yet visited Omi’s grave, had not said my final good-bye.

One thing that I know for sure is that I miss my Omi. She passed away over a year ago, her flickering light blown out, but her memory still strong. The last time I talked to her was a week before she died. Now I stand at her grave and I say, “Hello Omi” in a shaky, broken voice. I feel my face contort with the sobs I desperately try to hold back. My eyes and cheeks are flooded by raining tears, my sinuses swell in protest to my running nose. In my hands, I’m holding purple-blue irises, just like the ones I gave her for Mother’s Day one year. Wiping my nose on my shirtsleeve, I feebly compose myself enough to arrange the purple-blue irises in the vase already filled with flowers from other friends and family. The realization that she is really truly gone starts to sink in as I stare at her name engraved next to Opa’s. One of my life’s heroes will always be remembered. “I miss you Omi.”