5 Years

December 29, 2015 marked 5 years since we lost our Lex. So much has happened in those 5 years as we have been living our lives moving through time. While the years have passed we have continued to grieve and to miss Lex daily, sometimes hourly, surprisingly the sadness is still almost as intense as when she died. There are vivid memory flashes of the last few months of her life, these flashes are often of memories I wish I could forget. Anger sneaks up on me too, I am so angry that this happened to Lex and to my family, but, this anger is different, its tinged with helplessness and hopelessness. Guilt haunts me, yes I feel guilt, two different kinds of guilt. First, I still wonder if I missed something that could have saved her, I understand that this is unreasonable but I can't help how I feel and the responsibility of her life in my hands is overwhelming. The second kind of guilt addresses the life I continue to enjoy and all the people that I have befriended over the last 5 years all the things I have done, even my sweet dog Turtle none of which I would have if Lex had lived, which crushes me. I recently learned something, I learned to be gentle and kind with myself. All these feelings that live in my head weigh me down but those 2 simple words 'gentle and kind,' offer me relief and give me permission to feel how I feel to not pretend that I'm ok, they tell me to be gentle with myself to stop trying to reach for unreasonable standards of behaviour. I'm sad, I miss my daughter, and I always will I'm working on trying to live with this and it's a life long challenge, but I think that while the first step is to be gentle and kind with myself the second might be to forgive Lex for dying and to just love her for who she was.