You Are Always With Me
Eight years ago today - it was the last day of my winter semester. I dragged my feet heading home with my packed car because I knew that what awaited me was only a lot of sadness and pain. So I put on some of your favorite music and took a drive. When I finally walked through the door, Mom was ready to run out for a quick errand and I agreed to sit with you a while. I made my way up to my childhood bedroom - it had been transformed into a makeshift room for you, complete with hospital bed and oxygen tanks. The moment I walked in, I knew you were gone. You took your last breath on this Earth alone, amidst the in between, in the time it took for one person to walk down the stairs and one to walk up. When I realized, I sat down next to your body, in the rocking chair that you used to soothe me in as a baby. I didn’t scream or cry. I didn’t feel relief or overwhelming sadness right away. I just sat there for the time it took Mom to get home, trying to catch my breath, knowing that life would never be the same again. • I told Mark recently that what I felt most in the days after your death was anger - I was mad that everything kept going without you: the funeral came and went, the hospital bed and tanks went away, families celebrated Christmas, another semester started and then ended. Days and days have kept pounding on and they never stopped. I graduated college, met a man I love, got married. We bought a house with Mom, years have passed, and through it all, I’ve never really felt like I caught my breath. That’s the thing about grief: it has many waves and forms, but it never completely lets up. Life never goes back to what it was. But I see so much of you in others, and in the world, and in myself. And In that way, I know that you are always with me.