This coming week marks six years since my husband fell ill, and late in the month we will mark his fifth Yahrzeit.
It’s a minute and a lifetime all at once.
I’ve reached a point where I can think about that year without crying … sometimes. It was a year of illness, loss and grief of incalculable amounts. It was a year in which I lost myself in caretaking, and in which my children lost the safety and innocence of childhood. It was a year of love and laughter, of knowing that we had to say all the things before we couldn’t. Sometimes we did well at that, and sometimes we failed. It was a year of guilt that I couldn’t do more, say more, be more for my husband and my children.
In the ensuing years my three children and I have traveled a path both together and apart in which we have each had to find our own ruts in the road and dig in deeply to figure out where we are going next. The one thing we all know is that we always have each other’s backs, no matter how far apart we’ve roamed. Walking through brimstone together does that to you.
This past weekend my daughter, my joy-filled, lovely middle child, graduated from college. As always with momentous events now, there was sadness mixed in with the celebration. Sure enough, without being asked, her two brothers, one in Israel and on in DC, tuned in to the live stream to watch her walk. They were as proud as I was. They had her back.
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