These days.  These reflections of what was and what will never be are blending into what is.  I am reminded always of what I lost, and most recently I have begun to breathe in what remains.  These days, my sense of being is not at all what I expected-and yet, it is as if, these days could not be anything else than simply what they are.

These days my daughter and I move through the normal -whatever that word means-ebb and flow of getting on with the business of living.  She moves me with her keen observations and her kind heart.  She frustrates me with her teenager brain, and she makes me stronger as I watch her weave through the layers of grief she still carries and keeps hidden.  I will never be able to change this for her and these days it is the deepest part of my ache.  These days I come to realize this loss, her father’s suicide, will forever be a part of her story-separate from my story and my husbands suicide. We navigate these separate stories together and honor the man we loved unconditionally. These days we both look at the loss. These days we both look at the life.

“This whole time we have been healing,” my daughter said to me after an insightful chaotic gathering.  These days we honor the traditions that defined us as a family of three and we embark on new traditions as a family of two.  We go on.  We cry.  We laugh.  We look at what these days offer us in each moment. We allow ourselves to look back and talk about the pain, the hurt, and confusion of watching someone we love fall apart at the soul.  We look at the limitations and we look at the opportunities.  These days we cast out what no longer works for either of us-and clearly, never will.  We stumble.  We scream. We question.  We get angry.

These days we look at where we are, from teenager to mid-life, from high-school, to graduation, from community to neighborhood, from broken hearts to beating hearts.  We stumble. We scream. We question.  We get angry.

These days, have not is transforming into have.  Our hearts are strong.  Our will is strong.  We are moving through. We stumble.  We scream.  We question.

We love.