"Hello," and "I love you."

I have two sides to my family: my mother’s, my father’s. My father’s side lives in one country in Europe; my mother’s in another. I’ve always loved everyone in my family, when I see them (which, at this point, has been four years ago). But the distance creates a feeling of acquaintance. I don’t know them as well as I’d like to. It creates both a stream-lined relationship, and a sense of guilt. I love my family. But I hardly know them. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s life, living 9 hours away via plane. And it’s always wanting to visit, but the dollar’s too low, the tickets are too expensive, the timing isn’t right.
Two weeks ago, on July 20th, my grandmother (on my mother’s side) passed away. She was 89, I think. She’d been sick for a long time, she hadn’t been getting better, and it was stressful for my mother to live so far away and be able to do so little; her sister took most of the care of her, even when she and her sister differed on opinions of how to do that. My mom was supposed to go visit her in September. Right after I left for college. We were so close to seeing her. My mom left, that Friday, for the funeral. I cried. I still cry, when I think about it. I never knew my grandmother well. She was a painter, a good one; much like my mom. She was kind, and had a sweet, soft voice like sugary dough covered in flour. I would tell her, “hello,” and “I love you,” in the foreign tongue when we visited; it was all I knew how to say. I was a child the last time, really. I wish I could’ve been more than that. I wish. I wish. I wish. I wish. Every time a relative passes away, along with sadness, I feel this guilt, this pain, this remorse over how I was, even if “how I was,” was only a nine-year-old girl, unsure of the language and the relations and scared and shy and imaginitive and I’m sure Grandma Vera understood that, just as Grandma Bacher understood, just as my step-grandmother Latchka did. I just wish I knew for sure. I wish. I wish. I wish.
They read an Emily Dickinson poem, in the foreign language, at her funeral. I don’t know which one, but I put this up on the day of her passing, so I’ll put it here again.

“As at thy portals also death, / Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, / To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, / maternity, / To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, / … I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these / songs, / And set a tombstone here.” - “As a Thy Portals also Death,” Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass