death anniversaries are weird…

death anniversaries are weird.

like, this was the absolute worst day of my life.

but today? the sun is out, it's unseasonably warm, and people are going about their day as if it were any other saturday. and then i realize that i, too, have continued to go about my days. i have continued to live. but today, as the world keeps moving, i find myself stuck in the past.  

for a while after she died, i just couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a world without her in it. i still can't, not fully. watching cancer strip her of her immense brightness, her kaleidoscope of colors, was profoundly difficult. cancer was like a dimmer switch - turning the wrong way, and no matter what we did to try and stop it, our world faded to dark. those last eight months happened fast. too fast. and i've never felt more hopeless than i did in her final days, soaking up the fleeting moments she wasn't sleeping, desperate to keep her with me for one more conversation. one more joke. one more hug. one more smile.

my chest aches when i think of her, even more so when i think about the fact that she isn't here anymore. losing your mom is a soul-crushing experience. but when it happens, you're left on your own to just figure out a way to go on. the days turn into weeks, and before you know it, here you are five years later, wondering how so much time has passed - how she could possibly have been gone for this long.

grief is such a sad, long, and lonely journey - but it's simply the pain we agree to endure in exchange for knowing such love. but there is one thing about the pain of grief that no one can really understand; and that's why we choose to hold onto it - to give it space in our hearts - when it hurts so fucking much. it's because it's the only thing that makes us feel connected to the ones we lost.

the thing about grief is that it's not exclusive. it can consume you and dull every bright thing in your life, shadowing your existence in a muted tone of grey. but once you know grief - have genuinely felt its gut-wrenching pain at your core, you learn to live and love with a fierceness you never knew pre-grief.

it's like... because you've had to let someone go, because you know loss, you, in turn, learn more about love.

that's what she taught me; in life AND in death. love.

and for that, i'll be forever grateful.