My chest has been hurting all day.
Not figuratively. Literally. A tightness that never quite lets go. I have tried to stay busy, knowing tomorrow is coming, telling myself I’m just anticipating the one year mark. But every footstep has felt heavy, like I am walking through water instead of air.
The feeling kept building all day, this weight sitting just under the surface. I knew it was there, yet I could not place it. Surely, I was simply bracing myself for what I believed would come.
Even my ten year old noticed.
During his school party, he leaned his head against my chest and listened for a moment. Then he looked up at me and said my heart was beating really hard. He asked if I was scared. I told him no. And that was true. Fear is not quite the right word.
It is more like a restlessness. An unsettled, unnerving feeling that hums through my body and will not quiet. The kind that makes tears come easily and breathing feel shallow.
Last night, Thursday night, I stayed up late wrapping gifts. I placed them under the tree one by one, adjusting bows, smoothing paper. When I finished, I sat down on the floor and leaned my back against the couch and just looked at the tree. The lights were soft and steady. The room felt still.
And I missed him.
I miss him all the time, but last night it deepened. I started thinking about how much I miss him and then my thoughts turned to him. To that last Thursday night. To what that night must have been like for him. To what I did not know then and can never unknow now.
I lost it.
I started bawling, the kind of crying that takes over your whole body. Somewhere in the middle of it, I fell asleep right there on the rug behind the couch. My husband woke me up this morning, surprised to find me there. I was surprised too.
I think I just wanted to be in front of the tree.
I cannot fully explain why. I do not know that it made me feel closer to him in any tangible way. But there is something about the lights. Something gentle. Something steady. Maybe there is a small piece of joy in them, or a quiet kind of comfort. Maybe it is just the softness in a season that otherwise feels sharp.
Today, the heaviness followed me into the school.
Today is the last Friday before Christmas break.
Even without loss, this is not a normal Friday. School hallways buzz with excitement. Classrooms smell like sugar and glue and paper plates. Parents move through doors and down hallways toward parties and treats and the closing of another year. There is a feeling in the air that something is ending and something else is about to begin.
Parents were lined up and guided through the building as I went to my daughter’s party. Down the stairs. Through the foyer. Along the hallway. I remember thinking how strange it felt. How unfamiliar the movement was. My mind reached for a memory to anchor itself. Did we do this last year. Was it like this before.
And then everything came together.
I was not here last year.
I did not make it to either of my children’s Christmas parties at all. That day lives in fragments. While classrooms were filling with laughter and music, I was dealing with detectives. I was in shock. I was surviving something no parent should ever have to survive.
It started making sense in that moment as I choked back more tears. This heavy, flooded feeling I had been carrying all day was not meant for tomorrow. This is the feeling I have been waiting for. It just arrived attached to the day my body remembers instead of the date I have been watching.
Last year, the twentieth fell on this Friday. The Friday of school parties and routines and normal life continuing on, while my world was collapsing. My body remembers that contrast. It remembers the dissonance of joy and devastation existing side by side.
I have been preparing myself for the date, but it turns out this Friday carries more weight than the number on the calendar. Today is marked by context, not math. By hallways and paper plates and the knowledge of where I was not.
So today feels like the one year mark, even if the calendar says otherwise.
Grief is strange like that. It does not always come when you expect it to. It comes when the pattern repeats. It comes when the world recreates a moment your body never forgot.
Today is not just a Friday.
It is the Friday my body remembers.
