February 28th, 2014; it was yesterday and also a whole lifetime ago.

The body remembers when the anniversaries of tragedies are creeping up. February is also the anniversary of a loved one’s cancer diagnosis and the anniversary of little A’s weeklong hospital stay. Februarys feel heavy to me.

The rawness of grief wears off through the years, but the mark it leaves on my soul deepens as I’ve grown up. As I watch my own children turn from babies into toddlers into small children, the finality of death seems harder than ever to swallow. When the deceased is a child or a young adult whose life is cut short suddenly–death feels so random, so pointless, so inexplicable. Religious platitudes are meaningless in the face of its harsh reality.

“No parent should have to bury their child,” as Theoden poignantly remarks in The Lord of the Rings movies.

Life is short, and fragile, and we are imperfect humans incapable of appreciating all the goodness that the world has to offer. Parenting very young kids is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’m often tempted to think, it will be easier in the future.

Maybe it will. But there’s always the possibility that there won’t be a future. I don’t want to wish away these difficult but beautiful days. If there’s ever another watershed moment in my life that divides it into a before and after–and there always will be–I want to have really lived the “before.”

A part of me has lived in the evening of February 28th, 2014 for nine years, and it always will.

xx Claire