seven years later
Seven Years
Seven years.
I meant to write this a few weeks ago. I had every intention of sitting down and putting my thoughts together, but sometimes the words just don’t come when you think they should.
Maybe grief doesn’t work on a schedule.
Seven years somehow feels like forever, and somehow it feels like yesterday.
It’s strange to think about everything that has happened in those seven years. Life kept moving, because that’s what life does. Kids grew up. Our family changed. Babies were born. There have been birthdays, holidays, vacations, celebrations and a million ordinary days in between.
And through all of it, there are still moments when I think about how much I wish you were here for it.
There are things I would love to tell you. Things I know would make you laugh. Things I would probably call you to complain about. Family stories you should know. Moments when I can almost hear what you would say.
That’s the strange thing about losing someone you love.
Eventually you learn how to live with the loss, but you never stop noticing the space where that person should be.
Some days that space is quiet.
Other days it is incredibly loud.
And anniversaries have a way of making it louder.
I don’t know that I’ll write one of these every year. In fact, I hope there comes a time when I don’t feel like I need to.
Not because I’ve forgotten. Not because I love you any less. But because healing has to start somewhere.
Maybe healing is being able to let an anniversary pass without feeling like I have to find the perfect words for it. Maybe it’s remembering you on some random Tuesday because something made me laugh and I immediately thought of you. Maybe it’s telling a story about you without crying. Or telling one while crying and being okay with that too.
And maybe healing is realizing that moving forward isn’t the same thing as moving on.
Seven years later, I don’t think grief necessarily gets smaller. I think life just grows around it. There is more life now. More memories. More people to love. More things to be grateful for.
But there is still you.
Still missed.
Still talked about.
Still part of our stories.
Still loved just as deeply as you were seven years ago.
And somewhere in all of this is the reason There’s No Crying on Sundays exists in the first place.
Those words became part of our story during the drives, the chemo, the hard days and the moments when sometimes all you could do was laugh because you were tired of crying.
What started as a saying eventually became something much bigger for me.
Maybe I understand it differently now.
“There’s no crying on Sundays” was never really about not crying.
It was about finding a little bit of joy in the middle of something painful. Finding a reason to laugh when life was anything but funny. And eventually learning that grief and happiness can exist in the same life.
Maybe even on the same day.
Seven years.
Forever ago.
Yesterday.
Both somehow true.
And maybe next September I’ll write about you again.
Maybe I won’t.
Either way, you’ll still be here in the stories, the memories, the laughter and all those little pieces of life you left behind.
Loved always. Missed beyond words.
#cancersucks
