We are past the arbitrary but, perhaps, psychologically significant one year marker of Rachel’s death. A year of grief. It has been like climbing the Sierras from the central valley towards Nevada. Mountains beyond mountains. Sometimes we didn’t know if we could make it, or if we even wanted to, but we kept putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. We leaned on each other for support, carried each other along when we only wanted to lie down and sleep in the snow.
We are not “over” it, and we never will be. We have only made it over the most physically demanding part of the journey.
We are sadder now than we have ever been. It is a deep, abiding sadness, that characterizes our lives. Though we don’t cry as much as we used to, we face a thousand reminders a day that we will never see our beautiful daughter again in this world. We want to touch the little beauty marks on her face; we want to smell her hair and kiss the top of her head; we want to hear her laugh. But that can never be. We don’t want to get out of bed and face the day. What is the point, now? Wake us up when it is over...
It is as if we have made it over the mountains only to be faced with a measureless expanse of desert stretching before us. We can never go back, but why go on through this wasteland? Is there a promised land just beyond the unreachable horizon? Is Rachel waiting for us over there?
