July – a new month.  The unbearable passage of time. It’s been a month since I took these end-of-school-year pictures. There’s so much to say, such sweetness in this season of slowness, watching the kids grow in stature and in personhood.  Over the last months, they’ve learned to help make meals, slicing cucumbers and fruit, making rice, assembling sandwiches. They’ve learned hymns and parts of the New City Catechism. They’ve read hundreds of books. Zeke honed his skills with a new club soccer team, helped direct a musical at school. He was a leader at school, known for his kindness and his helpfulness and his loyalty to his friends. He…

I learned from social media a couple weeks ago that today is International Bereaved Mother’s Day. I wouldn’t have known to check, but the algorithms know me now. It feels comforting – to know such a day exists. I look ahead at next Sunday with immense dread. I don’t know how I will face Mother’s Day. But I will just face today. I have lived 255 days without Zuri. Two more months than I had with her. It’s been enough time for the habits of my mind to be rewritten. After all, the grooves were not too deep – I had lived that way for just six months. Six months…

This past Saturday marked 192 days that we’ve lived without Zuri.  The same amount of time as we had with her outside the womb. I’ve marked these days out one by one in my journal, like a shipwrecked sailor marooned on an island, a castaway losing her mind, etching out the tallies on rock for no clear purpose.  Waiting.  Waiting for an unknown amount of time. Six months and some. She is really, really gone. The physical traces of her living in our home dwindles.  Bottle warmer, high chair, baby snacks, all tucked away, replaced by framed photos.  Static mementos rather than things lived in and used.  All the other…

Day 50. Fifty days without our beautiful Zuri. Fifty days not hearing her giggle, or whine, or sneeze, or sigh in her sleep. Fifty days at the dinner table, without her yelling at her high chair for the next bite of food, without us eating with one arm, without us taking turns to hold her. Fifty days without ducking away for a quiet moment to nurse. Fifty days without her biting me while nursing. Fifty days without getting up in the middle of the night to feed her. Fifty days not waking up to her babbling coos. Fifty days without the older Zs tromping down the stairs first thing when…