My life has now been sharply divided by four days. Everything is now either before Joel was born, or after. In the middle is this endless millisecond of his life here with us. I run into plans and thoughts that were before, and just remembering what that felt like can bring me to tears. It’s so hard to see us before, while we stand here on the banks of after.

Everything looks so incredibly different to me now, and yet things are oddly the same. I don’t want anything to be the same, because I am not. I am hopelessly and forever broken, lost in the knowledge that I will live the rest of my life as a mother without her son. I know I will heal, and I know I will find peace, but I also know that this is a wound that will leave the deepest and most wildly colored scar. It becomes most obvious and angry when I am faced with a situation where I am supposed to be just as I was before. How can I just walk into the grocery store, review timesheets, pay bills, just the same as before I knew and said goodbye to Joel? Am I really supposed to just act the same?

Like somehow if I walked backwards into Kroger and signed my checks “Marge Simpson” that I would be comforted. Which is why there is no answer, life has continued on and truth be told much of it is the same. But that doesn’t stop the sharp gasp when I review a credit card statement and see the pizza we ordered on Joel’s due date, or look over the maternity pictures taken by my dearest Jilly, just two weeks before Joel was born.  

These things were before; before we knew what it meant to lose, to grieve, to hurt, before our innocence was lost. It’s so cliché, but it’s true. I keep thinking about all those times before when we were so happy and I know we will never be happy like that again. Yes, we will be happy, but it won’t be the same, we know something now that we didn’t know then, something has been taken from us that cannot be given back, and it will change everything, even how we are happy. Because now? We are after, and we can no longer be before. We can only stare across the divide and be grateful for those four days in between.