June 22, 2025

I answered most of my messages sometime between 3 and 5 AM, messages so sweet and so thoughtful, and then I fell asleep once more and woke drenched in tears.

There’s a difference in seeing support and experiencing it: meal after meal delivered, my home cleaned by sweet friends, people hugging us through tears.

We went to church today, twice actually, and it was so sweet and healing.

My mom devoted herself to her family and to so many — we’re benefiting from all the lives she touched. She loved them well, and now they’re loving us well.

People brought us meals immediately, but to be held by so many filled me with thanksgiving and sorrow.

I’ve always loved alone time, but right now it’s too hard — I took a bath today, thinking it would be relaxing, but I rushed out of it because the quiet was too overwhelming. Did she know I loved her? Was I a bad daughter? Too many thoughts haunt me, and my tears seemed to drown me in the tub.

“My Momma, my Momma, my Momma,” I can’t stop mumbling.

It’s excruciatingly painful. Incommunicably hard.

We feel so supported and we feel so loved. We’re all saturated in tears.

I loved my Momma.

June 22, 2026

Oof, it’s ironic to read this one. That first day back at church was sweet — it was one day of corporate mourning, never spoken of again from the pulpit.

It was nearly one year before I heard from the church’s executive staff — they sent a thoughtful card and flowers last week, which was kind.

I’ve regained my love for solitude and can process the pain in silence now. I remember how scary and painful that first bath was. It is really impossible to communicate the sheer horror of surviving suicide. I have never experienced a more poignant fear than the fear of living through suicide.

When I was young, long before death arrived my doorstep. I used to ponder the verse about how God records our tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). I imagine that I had one of the largest bottles imaginable that was a naïve thought, there are many with pain beyond my own imagination, but back then I couldn’t imagine anyone was more pain than me.

My mother did not take kindly to my tears, so I had to hide them from her. Perhaps one’s inability to allow another’s crying and natural sadness is one of the first signs that someone is mentally unwell. I had to find places to shelter my sadness. I often called them my “crying corners.” if you went to middle school or high school with me, he probably remembered one of my crying corners at home, I would sit in the corner of my tiny closet and put the clothes over my face to muffle my tears.

I have a walk-in closet now, and though I do not need to hide my tears from my husband, my closet remains my favorite place to the to allow my emotions freely flow. 

Scott began this puzzle on June 22, 2025, and now it’s finished and hanging in our living room. These simple things mark the passage of time and the new lives she’s forced us to build without her.

I will cry for these things forever, and my tears are proof that she existed. They are proof of her love, and proof of my love for her.