The rose we planted for her today.

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Bright Pink for my princess.

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Forever Loved, Never Forgotten

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.  We anticipate that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few day or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.  We misconstrue the nature of even those few day or weeks.  We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind.  We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss.  We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their child is about to return and need her spare key.  In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days.  We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it." Rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" the invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death.  We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able to even to get dressed that day? We have no way o knowing that this will not be the issue. We have not way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion.  Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and her lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness it self.

It seems like yesterday, I still look for her car, hope its her calling, pick up my phone to call her, and it is all ok for the split second before I remember, then it all comes rushing back....... and it is hard to breath it hurts so much....

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I would do anything to trade places with her, she has so much life to live, so much to do and see,.....

And there are so many that just don't understand, that think I should "get over it, after all it has been a year" You NEVER, "get over", the murder of your child. Perhaps you learn to get through the days, you tell people your are OK because they don't really want to know how much you hurt, you know they mean well but in reality, they don't really want to know. You quit talking about it because people don't want to hear, like it might be contagious or something. And maybe, in time, you might find some small measure of happiness, but you never "get over" it.