Five Years Later
Five years ago, my sister and I were lying in this bed grieving the loss of our sister-in-law.
She was in her early forties, and it was a loss we never imagined was coming.
We were in disbelief, a state of shock.
We could not imagine our family without her in it. She had been part of our lives for so long that it was difficult to remember a time when she wasn't there.
My sister's husband gave us the bedroom because he knew we needed each other. So we climbed into bed together and stayed there.
When I look at this picture now, I remember exactly what that day felt like. We weren't thinking about the future. We were trying to comprehend how someone who had been such a constant part of our family could suddenly be gone.
My sister sent me this picture today and wrote, “A lot has changed in five years.”
When she sent that text with the photo, it made me reflect on that moment and who we were then. She was right. We are not the same women we were in that picture.
The years have changed us in ways we could not have understood then. We have both had to look at ourselves more closely, including what we carried with us from childhood and what we didn't want to continue carrying forward. It has affected how we parent, how we love and how we show up in our committed relationships. We have become better at understanding ourselves, setting boundaries and holding them. Some generational patterns have stopped with us.
We take our health more seriously now too. Taking care of ourselves has become part of how we live, from exercise and what we eat to getting enough sleep. We have also spent time understanding our nervous systems and what each of us needs to feel calmer and healthier.
So much about me has changed since that day, inside and out. The same is true for my sister.
One of the biggest changes is how differently we understand time. We now understand that we will not have each other forever.
That has changed the way we hold the time we do have.
Time together matters more, even if it is just chatting on the phone. So does sitting around the table, spending time with our children, laughing about something completely unimportant, or meeting on a random Friday for a coffee date.
We notice these moments now.
During these five years, we have also watched her daughter grow and thrive. Her faith and resilience have always stood out to me. There is something especially moving about seeing those qualities in her because I know how much of that came from her mom.
Life kept going after the day in this photograph.
Our children got older. We changed and our relationships changed. There have been celebrations, difficult days, laughter, disappointment and plenty of life in between.
We could not imagine a life without her, yet somehow here we are five years later.
Still keeping her with us. Still feeling her missing presence at celebrations. Still seeing glimpses of her in her daughter.
Loving someone does not end because their life did.
Five years later, I can look at this photograph and see two women who had no idea what the years ahead would look like.
We have grown tremendously since that day. We appreciate each other differently. We hold our families closer. We understand better the value of every day we have with the people we love.
So much has changed.
And there is still someone missing.
She is loved, remembered, and she will always be part of our family, our lives and our history.
Forever part of us.