Rossella Rago CookingWithNonna

One year without you 🙏🏻 It still doesn’t feel real

A year ago today,
the world said goodbye to Nonna Romana.
But I had to say goodbye to the woman who was my entire world.

365 days without my Nonna.

I’ve spent this year trying to understand how someone can be gone and still be everywhere.

How a voice you can no longer hear can still guide you.
How hands you can no longer hold can still teach you.
How a love that once had a heartbeat and a place at the table can somehow survive without either.

Grief is a strange thing.

The world keeps moving,
completely unaware that yours will never be quite the same.

My Nonna lived 92 beautiful years.

She crossed an ocean,
built a family,
and filled a lifetime with enough love to reach people all over the world.

But to me, she was home.

She was my childhood summers in Mola di Bari.
Sunday afternoons,
flour-covered hands,
crowded tables,
and the beautiful certainty that somewhere in this world,

there was someone who would always be waiting for me.

For so much of my life,
I thought I was preserving her recipes,
her traditions,
and her stories.

I understand now that she was quietly preserving herself in me.

A year ago,
I held her hand as she left this world.
And somehow, she’s been holding mine ever since.

If I could have one more moment,
I wouldn’t ask for anything extraordinary.

Just an ordinary afternoon,
one more conversation,
one more chance to sit beside her without knowing how precious that moment would someday become.

I used to think the greatest gift was having a Nonna like mine for 38 years.

Now I know the greatest gift is getting to spend the rest of my life being her granddaughter.

One year without you, Nonna Romana.
A lifetime of being loved by you.

And whatever is left of mine,
I promise to make sure the world remembers yours. 🤍