Two years later, it doesn’t feel like two years. It feels like 30 seconds. And it feels like 100 years.  Time is a relative and nonlinear thing in grief.

We’ve carried on, because it’s what she would have wanted. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve done some kind of injustice from carrying on like we have. 

“Survivor’s guilt” doesn’t as often apply to families of those who die naturally. But I’m willing to claim it’s just as real. The guilt of living and loving, always held in tension with the knowledge that she’d want us to live and love. That jarring sensation of knowing she’d be pleased with our joy in a particular moment, and the jolt of pain in realizing she can’t be in that moment. 

I wonder now if there is a curse to being loved well. We feel pity and want for those whose mothers were made rotten. But what about us, who have had the best? What about us, who were grown in the sure and certain knowledge that we are loved and capable and holy? What about us, who were reassured at every turn that our living was for good? What about us, when grief threatens to pull us down, and we can’t even fall because we were raised to stand through the storm? 

We give space for the unraveling of the un-mothered. But there is a weight to the steadiness of the beloved. Sometimes I worry I cannot bear it. And as quickly as the thought comes, I am assured I don’t have to. That I am both strong enough, and don’t have to be. Because that is how a good mother loves her daughter for living in this world. And mine was the best.