Eleven Years

It's hard to grasp that it's been eleven years.

I remember thinking, soon after she passed away, that I couldn't get through a year without her, let alone five or ten.

And now it's been eleven.

I'm not getting through these years without her though. I get through them WITH her and FOR her.

She lives on in my heart, my husband Jesse’s heart, and the heart of every person she touched. She lives on in the stories we share with our boys, often along with laughter or tears.

When I struggle in life, I try to remember what my mom had to go through in her life. When I feel myself failing as a friend, I remember my mom making time each day to call her best friends. When I feel my patience lacking as a mom, I remember how patient she was with me.

She is with me, each and every day. I live my life trying to make her proud, and to prove to all who doubted her, that she did a fantastic job in life and as a mother.

For years, my life seemed split in two. The life I had with her, and the life I had without her. The accomplishments that she guided me through, and the accomplishments I had to go through without her. The friends of mine who knew her, and those who didn't. That was a big one. I remember thinking, "How can my friends really know ME if they didn't know HER?"

But now I've realized, I had it backwards. My friends DO know her, because they know me. I am who I am, because she was who she was.

I've spent 10 years hating this day. I would try to sleep the day away, pretend that it didn't exist. I spent multiple years crying the day away, barely functioning for days before and after. I've got journal entries and Facebook posts from this day that bring tears to my eyes when I read them, because the pain was and is still so so real. There are still days where I feel it pulling me down, ripping into me. But those days are lesser and lesser each year. And this year, I refuse to let this day haunt me the way I have in the past.

This year I want to remember her smile, her laughter, and her amazing heart. She was a devoted daughter, a loyal friend, and a fantastic mother. I may not have had her for long enough, but I am so incredibly blessed to have had her at all.