Two years…
How?
How is it two years since you left us? Left me? Left me motherless? Emotionally adrift? Bereft? I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive without you as a touchstone. You, the person who knew me better than I knew myself. The person who knew me before I was born.
The person who loved me unconditionally.
I have dreams of that day. Nightmares, really. The calls from the doctor informing me that your status was at first, guarded. Then declining. And at last…grave. There’s a description for you. As a noun, it’s a burial place. As an adjective, a description of serious concern or imminent death. Funny how our language can take a word and give it two meanings, and yet, tie those meanings together.
From hospitalization to death…hours. Mere hours.
Those days right after, when I had to deal with your funeral arrangments, Jack’s second fall and subsequent transfer to a trauma hospital 125 miles away with a second major surgery in two weeks; selling your house; dealing with the bills; the forms. The endless forms. Those days are a blur. I think my body shut off the emotional part of my brain so I could get through those days without falling apart. It, my mind, knew I would fall apart eventually, but it saved me from doing it when the grief was so profound and so new. So fresh.
So devastating.
How is it two years?
Two birthdays that were never celebrated. Two Christmas’s without you. The birth of your second great grandchild; seeing your daughter attain publishing success.
How? How is it two years?
Some days it feels like a thousand years; some, just yesterday.
I miss you every day. Every second of every day.
I miss you.
People said the pain would ebb with time; the sadness would lessen; the memories would dissolve.
They lied.
The pain is as sharp now as it was that day I lost you; the sadness? Just as vast. The memories? As vivid as ever.
I miss you.
I…miss…you.