Sarah's Inscriptions

August 14, 2022 (Two Years) Today is the dreaded day.  Your death day.  The second anniversary of it, no less.  Though somehow, today, I am not particularly overwhelmed by it, yet anyway.  Probably because I have been thinking about it coming up since your birthday.  These two days are so close, it's unfair.  One is meant to celebrate your being brought into this world, and the other, this one, symbolizes you leaving it.  I'm not yet sure how to spin it into a positive day.  I don't know that it needs to be, or ever will be.  If I have learned anything through losing you, and Aunt Diane and Grandma, it's that some things are just sad.  Shitty things exist, and it's okay to call them what they are.  Not everything needs to be spun in a positive light.   Two whole years though... How can that be?  24 months.  730 days.  All three ways to describe it sound so unbearably long, and yet it feels like you have been...

 Monday, July 18, 2022 9:48 p.m. Sometimes, if I think about her too abruptly, I almost believe she was just a figment of my imagination.  Like this whole time she was never real.  I never touched her.  I never heard her speak or laugh.  I never felt her love.  Because sometimes, in this immense grief, it can feel like she's been gone forever.  It can feel like she never existed at all.  And other times, I feel as though we last hugged just yesterday.  I just heard her laugh this morning.  I just saw her smile.  I could still tell you what she looked like.  I could pick her out of a crowd even now.  I think I would run to any woman who even slightly resembled her, just out of habit.  They would simply vanish once I got too close, just like she did.  She just disappeared, if you think about it.  One day, she just vanished.  That's what her death feels like to me I suppose, like she just went missing....

 May 30, 2022 - Memorial Day Memorial Day used to be such an occasion for us.  Me, Heather, Mom, Aunt Diane, and Grandma would all go flower shopping beforehand, picking out the best geranium basket we could find, to deliver to Grandpa Harvey's grave on Memorial Day.  We would also travel to Clyde Park Ave to visit Grandma's parents, brother, and sister-in-law.  We sometimes even ventured into Jenison to visit Grandpa Larry.  It was a day of remembering everyone we had lost, while subconsciously celebrating those we still do with them. But now it's Memorial Day 2022, and only Heather and I remain from that long list of women.  Grandma Donna passed in September.  It hasn't even been a year yet, but I somehow feel like she's been gone for much longer than that.  Maybe it's just because, after someone does pass, you never see them again.  They're no longer physically with us, which can be hard to process.  No matter how many losses I have e...

 May 17, 2022 (Tuesday) This entire week of my life so far (which has literally just been Monday and Tuesday, but damn it feels so much longer already), has been consumed with thoughts of guilt. Sunday night, my sleep was held off by the thought that I could have saved my mom. I don’t know if you’ve ever lost your mom, or anyone you love dearly, and if you’ve had similar thoughts, but they’re pretty brutal. The thing is, as I’m sure most of you all know, my mom died unexpectedly. She didn’t feel good the day before, and was gone by 6 the next morning.  But the other thing is, we had noticed her swollen ankles. A few weeks or months before she passed, because what is time, we noticed that her ankles were swollen for some reason. When we brought it to her attention, she said “thanks, now I’m going to worry about them.” In that sarcastic tone that only a woman plagued by a bunch of medical things can have. It wasn’t until her death certificates arrived that we learned her heart f...