Dear Mia....

This year, on your birthday, I didn't make any posts about you on social media. I thought of you when I woke up, when I ate breakfast, as I scrolled my feed, but it felt distant to me. Kind of surreal.
I remember thinking that this is a new stage for me, that maybe this is what truly healing from your loss was like. I felt sad, because at the end of the day, when I went to bed, I thought of you again, and I thought I should acknowledge your birthday better, that maybe I was betraying you somehow by not.
But I went to sleep anyways, because you are dead and no 'happy birthday' post was going to change that.
And then, a week later, Justin died, too. And I am floundering.
So now... on the anniversary of your death, I don't know what to do.
You have been gone longer than you were alive this year. This year, you have been dead for half of my life. Am I forgetting you? Am I losing you more because of this?

I have spent hours... whole days, weeks, imagining you. Who you would be. Who I would be if you were here. This week, I wonder if you had lived, would Justin also have lived?
Would we have partied the way that we did in high school and after? Would you have joined us or warned us?
I picture you as an adult, as a 23 year old woman. You would have worn your hair long, I am sure of this, after the chemo had stripped you of your hair, if you had healed, you would have grown it out. Long and wild and sassy. I picture you as a mixture of me and pictures of girls who I think look like you.
I wonder what you would have decided to do. I don't know, so I picture you in all kinds of professions. I wonder what you think of me now. I wonder if you miss me, too.

Did you know that he was going to die? Is that why you eased my grief for you in a week that normally tears me apart? Did you know that I would be so bitterly jealous of the two of you being together again, while I was left behind to learn how to live without you both?
To be clear.... I don't want to die. I just want to talk to you again. And it is so unfair.
In my darker moments, I wonder if I have done something to upset the universe to have this happen.

I find it impossible to separate my grief for the two of you right now.

I cry for you, because I wish that you would have gotten to experience growing up. I cry for both of you because I wish you could know the things that growing old would teach you. I cry for me because I wish that I could share this life with you so badly.
I picture us at family functions, forcing our kids together, cracking jokes about Mom and Dad and people we knew growing up. Telling our younger siblings that they got it so much easier, even if they didn't.
I picture us at our kids weddings, at their graduations, at a bonfire at the bottom of a hill, camping out, laughing.
I pull up to our parent's house, and all I can see, everywhere I look, is the two of you, so vividly that sometimes I think you're really there.
I hope that you are. I hope that you're checking in on me from time to time.
I hope that I can live a good life, so that when I see you again, I have so many stories and experiences that I can describe to you.
I love you,
Until next time,
-Jaimee