I forgot.

For the first time in five years, October 7th dawned with no sense of dread, no lingering heaviness, no tendrils of sadness. I didn’t remember until nearly halfway through the day, when my mom called to ask how I was doing.

When I realized I’d forgotten, I was… appalled. In the hustle of raising a lively, wonderful, ridiculous, amazing little girl, I’d let myself step away from the immediacy of my grief. I felt like I’d failed you, made you something lesser somehow. I was pretty rocked by it, and judging by the number of cry breaks I’ve had to take in writing this I’ll go ahead and say I still am.

Turns out I have no idea how to do this, how to let time do it’s job in easing the pain. I don’t know how to stop being devastatingly sad in missing you without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. And there it is. Clean vs Dirty Pain (and another example of how Karen somehow hears my thoughts).

The missing you, in whatever for it takes? The sadness or joy or love, the tears and memories? That’s clean pain. It’s simple and pure. It hurts, sure. But it just… is.

The judgement? The assignment of value to one form or another? The guilt, the anger, the fear? That’s the dirty stuff. That’s me mucking up that pure grief with restrictions and rules and constraints instead of just letting it… be.

So I guess, as in everything else, I’m still learning how to do this, how to miss you and honor you and love you in my own way. Bear with me kid, sometimes I’m a slow learner.