Julz: Right Where I Am 2017: 5 years 3 months 26 days

Five years, three months, 26 days.

Or 1943 days.

2,797,920 minutes.

I have no idea where the time has gone. Our lives have moved away from the day we last saw her so quickly. There are times where really it all only feels like yesterday. The thoughts return to those days and weeks around her life and death seems so raw, so new.

How can it be five years already? It really is such a significant amount of time to have passed; so many things that are now becoming more obvious that she is missing. Of course this year she should have been going into Year One, with her younger sister heading to Reception. I was meant to have three children at the school at the same time. A missed school report and end of year photos, which include the first and last days of schools.

I really thought that everything would get better, everything would return to the normal I once knew before she died, maybe even before she was born. So many people told me it would get easier, that time would have healed everything; the pain lessens but not because I’m getting over the death of her, but because I know how to treat the pain.

I was recently diagnosed with Arthritis, it hurts, although I am still very early days I know it will always hurt. I use over the counter medications - my choice, it takes the edge off. I’m neither expected to forget about it or suffer in silence, to ignore the situation that I am in. So far I find some days are okay, no pain I can walk without limping. Other days my whole body just hurts, no matter how I sit or stand there is no comfort. These days I am never expected to just “get over it”.

This for me is what it is like to grieve my daughter, how the time has dealt with our loss. The pain of her death will always remain, I won’t ever heal. I have found ways of coping, and have also discovered the ways in which I don’t cope; I really am okay with that. For me personally it is important to have the rougher days, it keeps my daughter from slipping away completely, these rougher days don’t happen a lot now, but they do. It is just another realisation that I will never be the same; I’ll never be the person I once was, before her death, even before the moment she was born early.

I’ll never know the daughter I once held and fed, or know the colour of her eyes, or how her hair colour would have been. I never got to dry her tears, she rarely cried when we were there, we never got to make her laugh.

These are just a few things that show that I will never be the same person, and that I will never be over the death of our girl; that no matter how many years go by I will still forever miss our girl.

I couldn’t get her to stay.

I wanted her to stay.

~~~~~

You can read Julz' previous posts here:

Right Where I Am 2016: 4 years 3 months
Right Where I Am 2015: 3 years 3 months 26 days

Right Where I Am 2014: 2 years 2 months 3 weeks 4 days

Right Where I Am 2013: 1 year 3 months 4 days