18 months....a year and a half.....547 days...and I could easily calculate the minutes, seconds, etc. It feels like millions of breaths and endless nights since Keyan took her last breath. Time has inevitably marched on and yet feels like it has been standing still. I can not fathom how I have survived this long without her physical presence and still my brain struggles to face the reality.
Standing in the shower Christmas night with my tears streaming uncontrollably, I leaned my head on the shower wall. It took all of my will not to start banging my head against that wall over and over again while I begged my mind to accept her death, while I willed my brain to just come to terms with it, while I fell to the shower floor gasping for breath through my sobs, pleading with myself to understand that her body is no longer here.
Even stranger to me is that I also have to convince myself that she actually existed. It's a twisted game your mind plays on this journey of grief, an endless cycling of questions and a need to make sense of it all. I never dreamed I wouldn't comprehend the death of my own child. I never imagined the complexity and the selfless love it takes to not only hand her back to Jesus but to renegotiate my relationship with her. Choosing to really live after the death of my girl has been a choice that I sometimes have to make several times a day. To keep breathing, to laugh, to cry, to feel pride, to feel pain, and everything in between takes a measured amount of effort when you are walking through fog. As the numbness wears off and the reality sets in everything feels more poignant. I could never have predicted how the pieces of my heart would continue to shatter 18 months later but I do know that I will not give up. I will make her proud, I will carry on her legacy and every minute that I do, I have the hope of being one more minute closer to wrapping my arms around her again.
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