I’m always soft for you, that’s the problem. You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.’

“Today I forgive myself. Not just once. Again, and again, and again. As many times as it takes to find peace.”

I wear your ring every day and I feel strange without it but I still don’t call it mine. I think I feel similarly about your loss. I stare at grief and try to call it mine, then feel terrible, then selfish. I stare at your grave and try to pray, then wonder what kind of grief prayer is.  Maybe I should just tell you this. Your son will be getting on a flight tomorrow to go back to an island. He tries his best not to feel lonely without you and I am always, stupidly, trying to love him for you. It is always wrong but never is. I am wearing a necklace your husband gave me for my twenty-first birthday. He emptied your drawers within a week of your passing but hasn’t moved your purse from its place on the shelf since the day we took you to the hospital. I am trying to love them both but I am very bad at it. I am trying to use my whole heart but I am very bad at that too. I wrote this after all. Long-winded, long, winding way of using almost blinding sunsets and grown golden barley just to say, I think of you so often. We miss you so much.