I still mother them….

Today I sat by the ocean for a long time just listening.

There is something about the sound of the water that makes you sit with things you spend so much time trying to outrun. Earlier, I sprinkled some of Vincent and Gabriella’s ashes in the sand. I always leave a little bit of them in beautiful places. Places I know they would have loved. Places they never got to see.

I sat there and watched the tide slowly come in, washing over the little piles of ashes in the sand until they disappeared. I never leave right away. I sit there until they are gone. I do not know why exactly. Maybe because some part of me still struggles with leaving them anywhere. Even now. Even after all this time. Because at the end of the day, those ashes are still their physical bodies, and there is something about that that still knocks the wind out of me.

People think grief gets easier. I do not know if easier is the word. Different maybe. You learn how to carry it better. You learn how to function around it. But the hard things? They never really stop.

Even the questions people ask can stop you in your tracks.

“How many kids do you have?”

I still search for the words sometimes.

I have two kids.

They are just not here.

“How old are your kids?”

That one is hard too. Do I say 23 and 35? Do I say forever 23 and forever 35? Are there even words for this? Because in my heart they are still mine, still my babies, even as time keeps moving without them.

Nobody really talks about these parts of grief. The million tiny moments that sting. The questions people ask with good intentions that somehow crack your heart open all over again. The way sadness follows you to the most beautiful places in the world and still sits right beside you.

And yet, I still bring them everywhere.

To oceans.

To sunsets.

To beautiful places.

Because if they cannot see these places themselves, then I will see them for us. I will sit by the water and tell them all about it. I will imagine what Gabriella would have loved, what pictures she would have taken, what Vincent would have thought standing there quietly taking it all in.

The hard things never stop. Missing them never stops. Loving them never stops either.