I never really understood what it meant when people talked about ‘the first year’. 

And even though I’d been through it earlier, when my mother was killed, I still didn’t understand what this ominous first year of grief entailed.

In 2017–2018, my circumstances were different; my relationship with my mother had been different; the nature of her death was different. 

But I realize now that the first year of grieving the loss of a loved one is essentially the same. 

It’s as undulating as life itself, but sort of like a compressed, sped-up version. There are plateaus and peaks, ebbs and flows, moments of clarity and periods—lengthy, unsuspecting periods—of so-called normalcy. 

I’ve often wondered why people expect you to forget your loved ones and stop talking about them. It seems to be an unwritten rule that you must bury all your memories of them too.

To me, it makes sense to talk about your loved ones and it makes even more sense to incrementally miss them as time goes by. You miss your loved ones when you don’t see them for a week, a month, six months, a year, right? Imagine missing someone you know you’re never going to see again. Ever.

You miss them all the time, even when you’re not aware of it.

You miss them consciously when faced with raw reminders, resulting in even rawer physical manifestations.

You miss them randomly and out of the blue. At 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon, after you’ve showered and are lying in bed reading the memoirs of someone who knew them, when their name in black jumps off a white page, grabs you by the throat and leaves you struggling for air, when the voice in your head screams out for them to come back, to return, to just please be alive and breathing again because this world is too fucked up without them … 

 Oh, and the first year also feels like it’s the epitome of impending doom.

I miss you, my Daddy.