And so begins another year. Another year of accepting a reality that looked so different than what I thought life would be. This year seemed to have started off so hectic. From another holiday season where it just felt like I was running on fumes trying to keep up with the world, yet still trying to manage creating all the magic that comes with that time of year, to moving the day after Christmas and to making sure everything was done and prepped in a span of 6 hours so the twins could come home to a new place. Oh, the joys of solo parenting was definitely apparent during all that time. New Year’s Eve this year still felt like something I dreaded. Something that made me anxious knowing I was about to enter another year that Erik would never be part of, but also knowing it was only three short months away from another death anniversary that I dreaded thinking about. Time moving lately has been scaring me. It was going to be more time between when I last saw Erik. When I last heard him. When I last remember exactly how he laughed, talked, smelled. When our twins last rested in his arms. As time continues to move it also scares me that the twins are getting older. That I’m now moving further away from when Erik knew them. When I knew them with Erik. Realizing that they are growing so fast and I would never get this time back, but also that Erik has been missing all of this and that could never be reversed. A time that now felt so far away. They were last with him when they were babies and as each new year comes around it makes it more apparent that they are getting older and further from that stage that I still feel like I sometimes live in until I look at them and see how much they’ve grown. It’s hard to live in an in-between. The before and the after. Still feeling like it was the very first day he died. To feeling like it’s been a million years since I’ve seen him. Since the loss New Year’s Eve and Day has seemed to continue to be hard even as time passes. The few days after New Year’s it felt as if a disc was removed from a stack of weights that was just sitting on my shoulders since the holiday season began. It was one moment of relief that I had been needing so badly. We made it through another holiday season. We made it through another start of a new year. We made it through…but yet here we are again, rounding the corner to yet another death anniversary just a few months away. And so the cycle begins yet again, but now with knowledge from another year of trying to move forward. Sometimes that’s all we can do. Continue to move ourselves forward to the best of our abilities. Doing what needs to get done. Because Erik’s life ended, but mine and the twins did not. That’s something I have to remind myself each day, as hard as it might be.
