It never really goes away.

I thought I would wait until Thursday for this post. Then I realized it's silly to wait for things when there is no need.

Thursday marks one year since we lost Natalia. What a silly way to say that. Tap dancing around it; taking shelter in a euphemism that doesn't change the fact. Natalia died one year ago Thursday. There.

I had wondered what I might say about this anniversary. I haven't been feeling particularly poignant lately. And then I heard something on the radio last week. It was a minister who has a regular feature on the alternative rock station that I like. He was talking about grief, so I listened.

This is what he said: We grieve because we remember. If you told a parent who has lost a child that you could take away their grief--take away their pain--but the cost would be the memories of their child...do you think they would do it?

No.

I answered out loud and immediately. I answered the radio in my car. That's one good preacher-man.

And he's right. The cost would be too great. I could never do it, not for my own child and not for a child who felt so much like my own that one year later I still sometimes find myself breathing every breath with her mother. As if one of us might forget how, and the other is there to keep us both going.

I won't ever forget; I won't ever stop grieving. And, Meli, I won't ever stop breathing for you.

Comments

[Susan]

Amen.