Much of the grieving process focuses on the person we’ve lost (daughter, sister, niece, friend)

How much we miss their touch, their smile, their voice and their laughter (those oh-so-unique hands)

How the memories and photographs we have of them will have to sustain us until we see them again (in a meadow full of flowers; in my mind, it’s always a meadow full of flowers)

How sad we are about the future milestones they won’t experience (first kiss, first love, stories and poems published, broken hearts)

How we wish we could have just another moment with them to hold them, to tell them we love them and to ease their passing.

As we continue to grieve, however, we also begin to notice the smaller holes their absence leaves in our day. The places we no longer go. The words that don’t appear in our vocabulary. The things we don’t do. The aisles of the grocery store we no longer walk down.

And these silences, these absences that catch us unaware threaten to send us back to the earliest days of our grief. When it was raw, ever-present and left us howling on the bathroom floor.

Since Clara left us we no longer use the blue towels.

We don’t bake cake pops or order peanut butter and chocolate at the ice cream shop.

We don’t ‘pouf’ covers or ask ‘on a scale of 1 to 10, how was your day?’

We don’t eat grilled cheese sandwiches, dad’s healthy pancakes or macaroni and cheese.

We don’t remember whose turn it is to sit in the back row of the van.

We don’t pick ‘the far-aways’ up from school.

We don’t bike to the deli for a cookie.

We forget to bring bird seed with us on our walks.

And don’t stop to listen to an unfamiliar ‘hoot’ or song.

We no longer limit ourselves to restaurants with ‘plain’ food.

Or hotels with 2-bedroom suites.

There are fewer arguments to referee.

And less ‘silly’ talk at the dinner table.

No more waiting while someone snaps a hundred photos of a pigeon.

Or stands perfectly still for a bird to land on her hand.

Nobody uses the left sink in the bathroom.

Or asks, repeatedly, where their library book is.

We don’t brush anybody’s hair other than our own.

Who would have thought that the absence of such simple daily events would weigh so heavily on the heart? And that we’d long for the night-time appearance of a small girl at our bedside, distressed because she couldn’t sleep…