Because

Writing was easier earlier this week. I’d come into my “muse room” and the words would flow. I wrote in here for two days back to back, feeling so refreshed and at peace when I pressed “publish” and closed the laptop.

I sit here tonight, looking out the window of that very same “muse room” and I feel restless. I feel like my nerve endings are on fire and my mind is in a storm and the relentless pain of grief swirls inside. I sit next to a pile of tissues and Lovey Bear and just stare out the window to the bleak, lifeless, wet January day we’re having.

And the thought comes to mind…”what now?”

What now, indeed. There is no prize for reaching this milestone. There is no finish line of this race. This “race” is life and this life is NO life without my little girl.

Ask any bereaved parent and they’ll likely tell you that the days leading up to or after a milestone are often harder than the day itself. This has proven true to me time and time again over the last year and two days, but it’s like I wished it not to be my reality.
It’s as if I published my “truth” post on her angel date and I expected to wake up the next morning not having to to work at believing it. It’s like I said it, therefore, it’s real. It has to be, right?

But the fact of the matter is…I woke up yesterday. And I woke up today. And I didn’t have my little girl.

My sister & her husband flew into town for a quick trip to be here with us. BECAUSE I don’t have my little girl. My family gathered together around the fireplace with wine & cheese at a beautiful spot yesterday. BECAUSE I don’t have my little girl. We spent the day at brunch and later at a brewery today BECAUSE I don’t have my little girl.

I don’t even drink beer. But I’d have stayed at that spot. In that miserably uncomfortable picnic bench seat. Drinking water and small talking. Just to not have to come home to this reality that I don’t have my little girl.

There have been messages, post shares and comments from all corners of the world. Family flew in. Friends drove in. They left work early for my I’ll timed candlelight ceremony. Stories were shared that I’d never heard and we received so many beautiful gifts of remembrance and loving words of comfort. People really, really rose up to greet us that day. They were there for us in every way we could’ve possibly needed them to be.

BECAUSE I don’t have my little girl.

The absence of her is like air. It is on and around everything. In and through it all. In every word we speak, thought we think and feeling we feel. There is no way around or over it. Air is everywhere. Kate is everywhere. And yet she is so powerfully absent.

And the thing of it is…I just want her. I just want her back. I want her to be my real life again. I want her to be my actual every day again. I want her back.

Because this pain? Without my little girl? It’s just still more than I can bear. I promise you that my public front is that. A front. I am not what I seem to be. A year and two days later, I am a terribly sad, weeping, jealous woman who just wants to be who I used to be.

BECAUSE I don’t have my little girl.

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