The Years Go Quickly But the Days Are Long Without You, Mom

I can’t believe we are here again. Another year has gone by since that awful day in November of 2012. In so many ways it feels like yesterday that I was speeding home from school to see you one last time. In so many other ways, it feels like forever ago since I heard your voice, held your hand, or gave you a hug.

The reality is that the years are flying by but so many days without you feel so long.

Nine years have seemed to go by in a blink of an eye. I truly cannot wrap my head around the fact that it has been that long since you have been physically present in my life. I cannot wrap my head around the number of things you have missed and how much has changed since you were last here.

RELATED: I Didn’t Just Lose My Mom the Day She Died

It has almost been an entire decade without you. In so many ways that is an unfathomable thought.

I don’t know where the time has gone.

I know that even in the speed of these past nine years, these nine years have also held some of my longest and darkest days.

Days that felt like they would never end.

Days that felt like there was no way I would survive without you.

Days that felt like there was no way I could do this for another day, month, year, let alone, more decades.

The crazy part about losing a parent when you are young is the reality of how much more life you are left to live without them. I look at my dad, who is in his 60s and still has both of his parents. As much as it will hurt to lose the backbone of our family, his parents have been able to see so much of his life.

My mom didn’t get that. She won’t ever get that.

My grief has changed throughout the years.

What started off as survival mode, turned into sadness, and then turned into anger. All of that turned into what I now consider this new reality that I can’t even remember most days how I got here.