How It Is Now

I'm thinking about how to change this blog, but I'm really not sure what to do, or if it's the right thing for me to do right now. I started this blog as a place for other parents who are newer to this journey than I am to find some support and believe they can survive.

A place to find what I needed after Ben died.

So how is it, for me, after seven years?

I have incorporated loss into my daily life, though some days I find myself whispering in a quiet moment, while doing dishes or folding laundry, "Don't go." In the first month after his death, I begged him, every day, to please, please come back. Now, though I hate that he is gone, that desperate longing for his return has waned.

But I still tell him I miss him, daily. I suspect I always will, even when I think I should stop because maybe I am holding on too hard.

I didn't think I could keep living after losing him, but I did, and I am. There are times when the pain returns, mostly around his anniversary, when I cry and rage and hate just how unfair it is to be here without Ben.

Seven years later, I am happy, but the sadness is always there, to some degree. I try to focus on the love he left behind, the love we have for Ben. I have carried on without him, at times reluctantly, at times because I am still here and need--want--to live my life. A good life, even a beautiful life.

A life still worth living. Never the same as before, but lovely nonetheless.