A Year Without You 😢

Some how a year has passed and here is what I've learned. 

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.

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

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

I'm sad. And lonely.

And that's the reality of loss.

It can't be fixed. Only carried.

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

It's so painful to have the world fall out from underneath you, and be 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.

Sometimes I wished for it to go away, then I realized 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 ties me to you in a world that kept moving on without you. 

I've leaned that grid 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.

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 th 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 are 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 conversations you when I'm driving down the road. I'll just keep imagining that you're riding shotgun next to me. 

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

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