04/25/2026
At fifty‑two, a person carries more than memories, they carry layers. Years of choices, mistakes, victories, and the quiet moments that never make it into stories but shape a life just the same. Reaching this age means understanding yourself in a way you couldn’t at twenty or thirty. It means knowing what matters, what doesn’t, and what you wish you could go back and say to the people who helped you become who you are.
But this year has been different. Harder. Heavier. Because this year carries the loss of my mother. A loss that settled into my life on March 22nd and changed the way the world feels. Losing a parent isn’t just losing a person; it’s losing a piece of your foundation. No matter how old you are, that kind of loss shakes you. It rearranges the way you move through your days, the way you think about time, and the way you understand yourself.
I have lived fifty‑two years, but this is the first one without her voice, her presence, her steady place in my world. Grief has a way of making even familiar routines feel unfamiliar. Some days I move through life almost normally, and other days the absence hits me in a way that stops everything. That’s the truth of it. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, and it doesn’t care how strong you’ve been in the past.
Still, these years have taught me resilience. They’ve taught me how to keep going even when the path feels uneven. They’ve shown me that love doesn’t disappear when a person is gone, it shifts, it settles, it becomes something you carry instead of something you visit. And even in the hardest moments of this year, I am still standing, still learning, still finding my way forward.
Fifty‑two years is a long time to live, and an even longer time to keep growing. This year may be the hardest, but it’s also a reminder of the depth of the bond I had with my mother. A bond strong enough that its absence can still be felt so sharply. And as I move through the rest of this year, and the ones that follow, that love will
