A Year Without You 😢

Somehow an entire year has both crawled, and at the same time, sped by.  I've learned that I didn't just lose you once. I lost you over and over again. A thousand times in a thousand different ways.

Everyday. 

Sometimes multiple times in a day.

Each new event that reminds me of your absence is another loss.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm traveling in two different directions: crawling both further away and closer to you at the same moment. 

I find myself wishing I could just go back to yesterday. 

I'm sad. And lonely.

And that's the reality of loosing you.

I can't fix it. Only carry it.

And a painful part is realizing that the world has remained unchanged while my world was forever changed. 

My world fell out from underneath me, and somehow I was expected to keep on going.

When you went away, so did part of who I was.

I look exactly the same on the outside, but I'm forever changed on the inside.

At times I've wished for the pain of it to go away, then I realize that it's the last piece of you I get to keep.

The quiet moments or sudden tears or the way I smile when I think of things we did and laughed about.

That grief is the thread that still ties me to you in a world that kept moving on without you. 

I've leaned that grief feels like perpetual homesickness.

It's a heart wrenching, gut sinking, empty feeling because I'm homesick for a place I won't have again.

Almost like it was blown from the surface of the earth in one single breath because one of the few people that has known me all the days of my life is no longer here with me.

You knew everything.

You knew how to do and fix everything. Everything.

You knew everything about me - - and you loved me anyway. 

You were MY mom. And I miss you.

So for now, I'll keep smiling at our private inside jokes that we shared. I'll keep having our usual conversations with you when I'm driving down the road and I'll just keep imagining that you're riding shotgun next to me. 

I'll keep your story and your memory alive in my family.

You will always be part of us. Part of me. Part of who I am.