I miss when life was effortlessly happy. I miss when it was easy to go out with my husband and simply enjoy the moment or the meal or the adventure.

Now, memories and grief cloud every moment. Dinners are particularly difficult and I’m not exactly sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the thousands of dinners I enjoyed with my family. There used to be six of us: four rowdy kids and a Mom and Dad. It was fast — with three growing boys, especially, dinner seemed to go so quick. I love having dinner with my sweet husband, but it’s a stark contrast to what was once was my home.

We go to places we used to take my parents, and I can’t help but think of the smiles and laughter the four of us once shared. Many were places Scott and I first discovered together, then brought my parents to escapade with us.

Presence, they say, is the key to happiness. I wholly believe that — romanticizing the past and dreaming of the future tends to destroy any chance at present happiness, but there is also a time to grieve.

Grief is a whole body experience — its brain damage, as its simplest explanation, and it affects everything. The more traumatic the death and the closer connection, the more damage is inflicted.

Brain damage takes time: slow, lethargic, low-stimulus, and quiet to heal. In our western world, grievers are not often privileged to this… we have to go to work, we have to keep up with responsibilities, we have to continue with normal living. For the majority of our days, we have to pretend it’s okay. And to an extent, it is okay. To an extent, it is happy. Because, once again, it’s a both-and.

It’s a dichotomy of emotions.

But I miss when it was just one — just happiness, just tiredness, just excitement. I miss that simplicity.

I miss just celebrating and really celebrating, not thinking of those who can’t celebrate with me.

Even at our wedding, I remember crying with my Mom about how Patrick couldn’t be there. We didn’t have to say it aloud — one look and it was easy to tell we were both heartbroken about it.

And then she left me, too.

That fact will be painful everyday and even more poignant at every milestone for the rest of my life. And that just sucks.

* * * *

So we celebrate, and I cry. I try not to… not to suppress the grief, but to experience the today.

I don’t want to be happy and sad [simultaneously], I just want to be happy, but I don’t think that can ever happen again.