I’ve been thinking a lot about endings, how we rarely get to choose them, how they seem so nebulous and distant until they’re right on top of us. Emily’s last day of 8th grade is next Friday. She’s been going to High Meadow since she was four years old. Ana started going there in first grade. So, that’s what? Eleven years?
I can’t believe it’s nearly over–the ending’s right around the corner and I feel completely depleted. I don’t have it in me for another ending. This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen – the final days of Emily’s time in middle school. Ana was supposed to be here to watch her sister graduate. Ana was supposed to be going to prom and moving up to her senior year of high school.
I wish we could choose our endings.
In my alternate ending, Ana would be upstairs right now and my office would still be her room. Maybe she’d be helping Emily pick out an outfit for her 8th grade graduation dinner. The house wouldn’t be so quiet. Things wouldn’t feel so…final. Each ending would be punctuated by a glorious new beginning. I wouldn’t have this giant lump in my throat.
It’s not just Emily’s looming graduation that’s making me sad. It seems like there are endings everywhere. My neighbor is moving away, a friendship I’d once cherished has essentially dissolved, and spring’s nearly over already. Winter was so long this year, I couldn’t wait until spring. I couldn’t wait to see the hummingbirds again. But now it’s nearly summer and only one hummingbird has returned and I can’t put bird feeders on my porch anymore because the seed was attracting rats.
What will I do without the birds in the winter?
Well, that’s melodramatic. I can still have feeders in the backyard, just not the porch. I loved watching them on the porch though.
I didn’t anticipate that grief would steal my endings. It’s nearly impossible to look forward to change the way I once did. Instead, I find myself holding on too tightly or procrastinating. I find myself avoiding the inevitable–milestones, endings, change. I’m so afraid of time. I wasn’t sure why, but now I think I know. It’s because Ana feels so distant.
I miss saying her name.
I miss her laugh.
I miss watching my girls together, hearing their voices upstairs.
I feel ancient.
Sometimes, especially when I see all the graduation and prom photos on Facebook, it seems like I’ve been left behind. It seems like everyone is on a train going somewhere fantastic and I’m stuck here in my lonely yard, waiting for the humminbird to make an appearance.
This, I realize, is what it means to be in year two of losing a child. Many people have said the second year is harder. I don’t know about that. All I know is that I’m sad when things change and I’m sad when they stay the same. I can’t quite find my groove. Maybe that comes in year three?