I was up at 2:07 a.m. to the kind of news you never forget.

The room was dark, quiet, still and then suddenly it wasn’t.

My nanny was gone.

There are losses that take a piece of you, and there are losses that take a whole chapter. She was the woman who raised me to survive, to fight, to sacrifice without hesitation. Every good part of me — every scrap of resilience, every instinct to stand back up — has her fingerprints on it.

And yet, the world didn’t stop.

It didn’t even slow down.

By sunrise I had cried more tears than I thought a human body could hold, and by mid-morning I was still supposed to be getting ready for a fully planned, prepaid, no-backing-out Polar Express tripwith a train car full of people I love:

Harper, Lynnlee, Kayson, Hailey and her boyfriend, Booper, Mimi, Papa, Hudson, and of course, Kris.

A grieving heart.

And a day that absolutely refused to pause.

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about motherhood:

Even on the days your world shatters, theirs keeps spinning and somehow, you still spin with it.

When my kids found out about Nanny, they didn’t shrink into their own grief. They didn’t make it about what they lost. They wrapped themselves around me. They quietly shifted into this instinctive protection stance, like they knew I was held together with dental floss and denial.

They helped me survive the day.

And then… somehow… magic showed up.

Not the gentle, quiet kind. The loud, ridiculous, unexpected kind.

One moment I was crying in my kitchen; the next I was in The Grinch’s lair, and then eating fried rice at a seafood café (because of course that’s what your day looks like when you’re grieving and still desperately trying to keep commitments for your kids).

Then suddenly, we were boarding a train to the North Pole.

And for a few hours… joy didn’t feel impossible.

Harper’s whole face lit up when she spotted Santa.

Lynnlee squealed at every single light, every jingle bell, every snowflake , even the fake ones.

Kayson was pure wonder, holding Mimi’s hands as she danced with him like the happiest grandmother on earth.

Hailey and her boyfriend laughed together in that sweet teenage way that makes you remember your own first crush.

Booper’s smile took over his whole face.

The actors were phenomenal truly magical.

The train felt alive.

And despite the grief lodged in my ribs, I felt her there.

Not hovering… but nudging.

“Keep going. You’re a mom. You fight for joy even when joy feels heavy.”

And the whole night, Kris never left my side.

He fielded my moods like a champ — grief, numbness, laughter, back to grief — the emotional Olympics of loss.

He held my hand while I cried behind my sunglasses.

He whispered, “We’ll get through this.”

Then, bless this man, he stayed up way too late with me even though he’d woken at 5 a.m. to play Fortnite together like the chaotic little duo we are.

Later, without me asking, he started planning a trip for us to go honor Nanny in her favorite camping spot in South Carolina a place drenched in memories. A place that feels like both a beginning and an ending.

And mixed in all of it… is the quiet truth I’m barely ready to say out loud:

My dad isn’t doing well either.

He’s probably not far behind her.

…although part of me is convinced he might secretly be a vampire and outlive all of us. Honestly, it could go either way at this point.

But here’s the bottom line:

The carousel  doesn’t stop when we lose someone we love.

And as a mom, it doesn’t even slow down.

You can wake up at 2 a.m. devastated…

cry until you’re hollow…

and then find yourself shaking hands with Santa, dancing with toddlers, laughing with teenagers, and riding a train to the North Pole — all in the same 24 hours.

Grief doesn’t erase joy.

Joy doesn’t betray grief.

They sit together.

They always have.

And if there’s one thing Nanny taught me, it’s this:

Don’t waste a day. Fill it. Live it. Fight for it.

Idle hands were never her style and she wouldn’t want them to be mine.

So today, in her honor, I’m ending with something she loved: head on over to the recipe page to make her famous in our family friend potatoes