She Said My Name

My grandmother died in 2019. She and I were close in a way I have never been able to fully describe to anyone. Last March I was hiking alone outside Sedona, on a trail I had done a dozen times, when I heard a voice say my name. Clearly. In her cadence. In her accent, which was specific to a small town in rural Georgia. I stopped walking. I looked around. There was no one within sight on the trail in either direction. I sat down on a rock and stayed there for a long time. I did not feel afraid. I felt, for the first time since she died, that the distance between us was not permanent.