I wish there was a more beautiful way to say that it makes absolutely no sense that four years have passed since the morning I found out you were free.

Four years since I screamed into the forest, desperate to crawl back in time just a minute  to the world where you were still breathing. Four years since I howled for you, wretched for you. Four years since becoming familiar with my mammal brain, my animalistic tendencies. The rage and the terror and the unbelievability of that moment ripped through me like glass. Four years since being uprooted and thrown into a life that I knew was possible but could have never imagined I would survive.

Could never have imagined the energy it would consume to just keep myself alive.

Could never have imagined how my body would react, contract, explode, absorb, dissolve.

Four years since the well of grief was dug.

The deep cavern of my pain. In an instant it burrowed and tore its way to the centre of my earth, loosening the ground beneath my feet until I was falling,

down

down

down to the depths of a new way of feeling. In that moment my capacity for emotion changed forever. The well is something that is always within my reach, always in my backyard. Sometimes it is well marked and I gently step around it, avoiding it (maybe even when I shouldn’t). Other times it is a landmine and I am falling before I even realize I took a step.

Four years of survival. Four years of missing you with an intensity I can’t quite convey. Of missing you desperately but knowing that I have to stay. Four years where staying sometimes feels like an impossible task. Something that is unfair and unjust and inhumane. Four years of pretending to be more okay than I am. Four years of being more okay than I ever thought possible.

So often in therapy we teach people that two things can be true (and held) at once. It is true that I am grateful and destroyed. I am thriving and perishing. I am healing and an open wound. I am moving forward (as time insists) but there is a part of me that will forever be standing on the side of the road in Lamanche clutching to the time and space before I knew.

Each day when I walk through the door with your name on it and sit in my chair in the office that our grief built, I am reminded of the beauty and the sorrow. Each time I share space and connect with another being I am reminded of your goodness, our goodness, and the hope you have left behind.

There is so much good here. Even now. Yes, even now.

The luckiest thing that has ever happened to me, Jake, was getting to be your big sister. The hardest thing I have ever done was learn to exist here without you.

My emotions are raw and unsteady, but I am sure-footed and grounded. My body is tense and painful, but my heart is as free as yours.

Grief is a tidal wave. We see it coming, thrashing and swelling before us. The only way through it is to stare bravely at the incoming depths, take a deep breath, and let it swallow you until you’re gasping for air. Even when it feels like your lungs are bursting, even when your nails are bloody from crawling out of that well, you are okay. Okay doesn’t mean you aren’t devastated. Okay doesn’t mean you aren’t tired. You are more capable than you ever thought possible. More resilient than you can fathom.

Somehow, miraculously, we can be okay. And not.

All of that and so much more. All of this, and I want so much more.

With your heart,

K