I have been counting.
1 month.
30 days.
720 hours.
43,200 minutes.
2,632,180 seconds.
That is how long it has been since my mother was here on this physical plane with me.
I have counted every unit of time because the weight of it needs to be named. Because saying "a month" doesn't capture it. Because every one of those seconds has been lived inside of — stumbled through, survived, sometimes barely.
Every fiber in my being hurts. And I cannot cry. I have sat with myself in silence — just me and the quiet — wishing. Wishing for a sign. Wishing for something to reach me in this place I am in. Nothing yet. Just the silence wishing back.
I am in a pitch black tunnel. No one in there with me. I cannot turn back around — there is nothing behind me now, only what was. All I can do is move forward. But I cannot see anything in front of me either. Just darkness. Just the noise of the world somewhere in the distance. I can hear it. But that is all. Just the sound of life going on without me having any sense of how to re-enter it.
I am angry.
I want to say that plainly because no one tells you that grief comes with this kind of anger. A boiling, directionless rage that doesn't have one clean target. I am angry at people. At the process. At time itself for continuing to move when I feel completely still. And yes — I am angry at God.
I am not ashamed of that. Someone once told me that if you never question God, you may not truly have a relationship with Him. Real relationship holds space for the hard questions. For the moments where you are standing in the middle of your pain looking up and asking — why. How. What now. I am in that place. And I believe I am allowed to be.
I am living in a haze. Moving through life as if everything is okay when it is not. Showing up to things. Answering questions. Functioning. And underneath all of it — running on absolutely empty. The tank is gone. I am operating on something I cannot name, some reserve I did not know I had, because I have no other choice.
What I cannot seem to make peace with is that life keeps going. That the world did not pause. That people are laughing and making plans and moving forward and somehow I am expected to move with them — when I have lost a piece of myself that I will never get back.
I miss my mommy.
Not just "my mother." My mommy. I miss her voice — the specific sound of it, the way it could settle something in me that nothing else could reach. I miss her laugh. I miss what it felt like to hug her. I would give anything to hug her one more time. To just stand in that and not let go.
I am heartbroken. Simply shattered. And I am done pretending that time is making that easier, because right now, it is not.
But here I am. Still showing up. Still writing. Still breathing.
I don't know if that is strength. I think it might just be love — for her, for my family, for the life she worked so hard to give me. And maybe that is enough to keep going on a day like today.
Maybe that has to be enough.
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