Three years ago today, at 4:16 a.m., I sat in the ICU and held my mom’s hand as she took her final breaths. I couldn’t bear to look at her face, so I watched the monitor as her pulse ox dropped.

80.
65.
40.
0.
0.
0.

The number would never move from zero again.

Respectfully, they gave us our time with her. Then the nurse came in to start postmortem care. With bleary eyes, we gathered her things—her makeup, her cell phone, the charger, her clothes. All the stuff she thought she would be returning home with.

But she wouldn’t.

They were coming, and she wasn’t.

How?!

I put on her green fleece, zipped it up to my chin, and inhaled her smell. I drove home from the hospital, tugging the fleece to my cheeks, using it to swipe my tears.

I have no idea how I survived the drive. Survived the day. Survived until now.

I stood in my closet at home, cradling the sweater to my nose, vowing never to wash it.

I haven’t. I won’t.

For a very long time after that day, every morning when I woke up, it felt like I was living a nightmare. There were about thirty seconds before I fully came to when I could convince myself it hadn’t happened. My mom hadn’t died. My world wasn’t shattered.

But she did.

And it was.

I wanted so badly to wake up from the nightmare.

But there was no waking up.

Only walking on.

Over time, I got used to how much my new normal sucked. It didn’t stop sucking, per se, but I remembered less clearly a time when life had been easier. Happier. When I had all my most treasured people still Earth-side.

I learned to accept my hardened edges. My bruised, soft spots. To make them mine.

To let light slowly come in through the cracks.

Three years later, I’d love to say I have grief all figured out. But I have learned this: grief is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a run you have to keep running, much as you might wish to stop.

Grief is awful and painful, but also, she is my friend. She alone knows the crater carved into my heart, and she lays down tiny cotton blankets to help fill it in.

She sits with me in the dark, cradling me as my mother once did.

She comes with me to Target and back-to-school night.

She holds space for the quiet shadow of everything I lost. Everything I was lucky enough to once have.

Over time, my grief has stopped being so raw. Aside from today, I haven’t cried over my mom in many months. Maybe a year. In a way, I miss crying. I miss when the grief was so visceral that it consumed me.

In a bigger way, I’m grateful to no longer be consumed by it. To realize that it stands as proof of everything my mom was and all that she still is.

That grief is love.

That I am okay.

That my biggest fear came true, and I survived.

That, by all accounts, I’m actually doing well.

I’m not going to lie. Grandmas with little kids at the supermarket still really get to me. So do grandmas doing school pickup or cheering at sports games.

They make me wild with jealousy. With rage.

Sometimes I get so mad at the universe.

Why did my mom have to die?

Why did she have to die on my brother’s birthday? On my husband’s birthday?

On days like today, there is a part of me that wants to scream at the top of my lungs.

But then I think…

What if I am actually being offered a masterclass in life?

What if the ultimate truth is this?

Joy and grief are inextricable.

Today.

All days.

What if my mom’s final gift was to teach me my most important lesson?

You can’t have love without pain.
Beauty without darkness.
Growth without shedding.
Beginnings without endings.

Since my mom died, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering where she went. Not her body, but her soul.

Visiting psychics. Reading books about near-death experiences.

Thinking that if I intellectualized it enough, I could understand it. Solve life’s biggest mystery.

1,095 spins around the sun, and I’m still not sure what I believe.

If I believe.

The spiritual part of me does.

The rational part of me can’t.

I have this war inside.

But I know these things to be true:

My mom never met my niece Charlie—on earth. But I am 100% positive my mom sent her to us. Hand-wrapped that little angel with a bow, delivering her exactly on her due date with gorgeous blue eyes and the cutest button nose.

Sometimes when Charlie laughs, I hear my mom. They have the same toothy smile, too.

Besties, from another place.

My mom also never met my dog, Starry. In fact, my mom didn’t even like dogs. She said they were toddlers who never grew up. And in a lot of ways, she was right.

But sometimes, as my dog licks my face, I get this sense my mom is there, saying hello.

In Starry. Through Starry.

Crazy?

Maybe.

Comforting?

Yes.

So on days like today, I’ve learned to hold my soft spot close. To let my pain burrow into my bones, to thank it for all the wisdom it brings.

It reminds me to invest in my children. To pay it forward to the next generation. To treasure mall trips with my daughter and snuggles at bedtime with my son. To never forget that nothing is promised.

Not our health.

Not tomorrow.

Not the next breath.

Three years on, and I’m still not sure how I survived.

I will never get over it…

But I have gotten on with it.

Thank you to Prozac and Ativan for calming me when I couldn’t calm myself.

To my therapist and psychiatrist.

To novels and nature and the Libby app.

To every bereaved person who welcomed me with open arms.

To everyone who loved my mom and continues to love on me. On all of us.

To family. The most valuable thing in life.

To the people who read my writing and tell me to keep writing.

To writing, which is the place I feel most connected to my mom.

And so, if believing comes at no cost—albeit with no guarantee—then I choose to believe.

I choose to believe even as a piece of me resists.

Mom, I choose to believe I’ll see you on the other side.

I believe.

I believe.

I believe.

And until then, I’ll see you in Charlie. And Starry. And Olivia and Jack. In rainbows and sunsets and green insects. In butterflies and blooming flowers. In the knowledge that the unbreakable can break—but also that we are strongest in our broken places.

And Mom, if we are all specks here for only a short time, when the universe welcomes me back, I hope my little speck ends up right next to yours.