Entering my house after an arduous day at school, the aroma of salted meats and sauces lures me to the kitchen. There is my Grammy, in a floral blouse, stirring away at her homemade pasta sauce. I miss this comfort.

My Grammy, Annette (Nettie) Nieman, was raised in Rockford, Illinois, in one of the numerous Sicilian-American families residing in the industrial town. Growing up, Grammy attended an all-girls Catholic school, and I vividly recall her outlining her displeasure regarding the lack of boys to kiss.

Following high school, Grammy left Illinois for the University of Wisconsin to attend X-Ray technician school. Post-graduation, she relocated to Los Angeles, where she married a man who would walk out on her. When Grammy approached her Catholic priest about the matter, he told her to wait. Dissatisfied, she divorced the man and moved back to Rockford, where she would meet my grandfather (known in my family as Papa Bill). The two married and settled down, moving to Houston a few years after my uncle and mom were born. Grammy still considers herself Catholic despite keeping a distance from the Church, as she never wholly recovered from what the priest told her. Hearing this story has always stuck out to me, as her defiance of the priest’s orders is a reminder of her strength.

Grammy wove her way into my earliest memories with her delightful cackling laughter. Her laugh was comparable to a witch’s — something both terrifying and entertaining. Her visits brought cream overcoats that kept invariably pristine, even when the weather was foul. In her suitcase, she would always stow away homemade crumbly lavender cookies and buckeyes, delivering sweet and sugary joy to a younger me who didn’t eat as many sweets as my senior.

Grammy hummed faintly as she walked, a staccato “hm-hm-hm-hm” that bounced in step to the shuffles of her leather slip-ons. The odor of her perfume was a unique, dreadful scent, and there was never a day when her signature cherry lipstick wasn’t applied in a thin line across her lips. Her floral rain boots lay patiently in the basement closet in anticipation of her next visit, for it never really rained in Houston.

Before Grammy was picked up from the airport, my mom would send me off to the nearby convenience store to get liters of Diet Dr. Pepper, a carbonated delight she would sip elegantly from a glass.

Grammy would make her delicious pasta sauce with pork chops and sausages and meatballs, cooked in the largest pot we owned. Her salad, too, was special, for she made her dressing from scratch. Each of Grammy’s dishes complimented each other so well, courtesy of her mother — my Nana, who had willed the recipes to her.

When I was younger, I loved the children’s book “Strega Nona,” as it reminded me of Grammy — hooked nose and pasta in all.

Behind Grammy’s suburban backyard was a golf course, which offered chilly walks at winter noon along the peripheral shrubbery. My siblings and I would search for stray golf balls, guiding one another in a game of “hotter or colder” to the hidden objects when stumped. We deemed neon and shiny golf balls “special,” creating fierce competition for who could collect the most. Grammy always congratulated us when we returned with our pockets full of shiny, spherical treasures. Though I’ve never liked suburbia, I miss golf ball collecting and afternoons spent playing in the grass with my brother and sister.

As Grammy would tuck me into bed at night, she would tease me with the ubiquitous “don’t let the bed bugs bite,” taking it up a notch by biting my cheeks as I squealed in childish terror. She loved to tease.

It’s devastating to know that I won’t be able to spend much more time with her.

I first heard from my parents of Grammy’s neurological decline in the midst of the lockdown, as she began to repeat herself. Succeeding a stroke years before, my family had already recognized that her health necessitated concern, yet hearing of tangible decline — confirmed by a brain scan — was a blow. I knew something like this would happen, as there was no escaping it, but I was upset regardless. My time with Grammy was — and remains — finite, as for all of my sixteen years she has lived across the country.

Having reflected on my time spent with her, I feel guilty. Why hadn’t I made an effort to spend more time with her sooner?

Initially, I tried to steer away from self-blame, convincing myself that I was simply younger and blissfully unaware of how limited my time was. While yes, I was ignorant of the reality of my diminishing time with Grammy due to my immaturity, I still had the ability to grow my relationship with her.

Whenever my mom would leave to go shopping with Grammy, I always refused and instead hung out with friends, despite learning later that shopping with Grammy was lots of fun — a venture that wouldn’t be as available to me in my teen years.

During Grammy’s Halloween visits, she would stay home and pass out candy while I went out trick-or-treating. Reflecting on this now, I wish I had stayed home with her just once to watch a movie and drink Diet Dr. Pepper together.

I wish I had helped her cook her pasta and talked with her more before she returned to Houston. Eating food other than hers following her visits just wasn’t the same.

This past summer, Grammy moved back to her hometown of Rockford with my Papa Bill, relocating to a retirement community. The two of them like to gloat about how comparatively healthy they are to the other residents.

What comforts me is the fact that Grammy is still the perfumey, lipstick-wearing grandmother I’ve known forever, and that there’s still time to spend with her in the coming years.

However, I’ve realized that until Grammy’s health came into question, I’d never considered the prospect of losing my family. With this newfound consciousness, I’ve made sure to spend more time with my older family members, as I want to know that my time spent with them has yielded their memory once they’re gone.

The inevitability of losing Grammy, nevertheless, is discomforting. Knowing that she’ll slowly lose her memory as time progresses is a crushing truth — one that is difficult to approach.

It’s difficult to put into words how one feels about the gentle loss of a loved one. The person you’ve known your entire life slips away from you so harrowingly slowly to where it’s too difficult to distinguish any change until a major decline has already occurred. I feel as though I’m scrambling to see Grammy, perpetually stressed that each visit will entail witnessing the loss of a part of her. My siblings and I are already no longer able to collect golf balls in her backyard, given that she now lives in a different town, in a different state.

And what completely wrecks me is how infrequently I’ll be able to see my Grammy before she passes. She can’t travel often, which reduces my visits to a portion of winter vacation. It’s merely a couple of years until I’m off to college and navigating early adulthood away from home. Sure, I’ll visit her and my extended family during school break, yet that is the sole interval during the year when she and I will be together. That leaves merely a small, certain number of weeks to hear her animated Midwestern voice and her laughter until she’s gone.

Time is invaluable, I’ve realized.

Sitting at a restaurant on my fourteenth birthday, when my mother asked Grammy what she loved most about me, she said “he’s sweet” and smiled. Moments like this make me devastated that I’m going to lose my grandmother, my Strega Nona, my Grammy.

So I offer this proposition: Appreciate the time you spend with your loved ones. The little things you take notice of, like unique hums and immaculate overcoats, become mere memories.