LIVED THROUGH THIS
The Hardest 30 Days: Countdown to The 5-Year Anniversary of My Daughter’s Death
I’m live blogging my most difficult days of the year
Day 30: These bleak February days with their unsettled weather patterns make me so impatient for spring. I watch the feeders from my office window, counting the cardinals in the naked branches of the nectarine tree.
As the day of your death draws closer, I make an endless, futile wish that time had simply stopped.
I wish that I am living the same day over and over again, a day in 2016 before you got really sick, a good day where you were happy and here and whole. I miss you so much. The missing is like a sixth sense.
Day 29: I drive past the graveyard by the high school, the one I couldn’t bear to bury you in because the thought of you alone, your bones lying deep down in the cold earth, was too overwhelming. There is a funeral taking place. The street is crowded with cars and mourners.
People dressed in dark colors stand beside a fresh grave as others find a place to park.
I navigate slowly past the procession and think of your ashes in their handmade ceramic urn, quietly resting on a shelf in my office. The grief hits me, as fresh and…
