Seven Years

Dear Mom,

Seven years ago today we shared goodbyes for the very last time. You said that I would learn to live without you. I didn’t believe you. Sometimes I still don’t. Every August 14th I feel like the 17 year old who watched the whole world shatter around her. I hear the sounds of your last breaths and the deafening sobs that ripped through the air as we watched you leave. The sterile smell of the hospital, the coldness of the tile as I sank to the floor. They’ve never left me. They never will.

You’ll want to know why I continue to relive this. People hold onto pain because we’re afraid that letting go means losing that person for forever. We bring ourselves back to those moments, the most visceral ones, so that we can still feel connected despite how badly it hurts. Over time we learn that experiencing our anguish allows access to a different kind of healing. There is solace in suffering; it teaches us empathy and compassion.

I am learning that I do not need to remember you just through mourning. That your sunlight is strong enough to beam through the dark clouds of your absence. On other days we will sit around our different tables and share stories of how you changed our lives and discover the ways you continue to move us onward.

But today I am going to allow the sorrow in, to let those wounds breathe. Tomorrow is the start of another year without you, and the rediscovery of the ability to heal ourselves over and over again.