3 Years. I miss her.

In some sense, it feels like this day was forever ago.  And in some sense it was.  And in another, it seems like it was just yesterday… the pain and heartache and sadness and anger so fresh.  After the grieving and they “Why’s” and the anger and all those stages… after the acceptance… life does go on.  It does.  But I’m always reminded of how much she has missed. Every time the boys say or do something crazy or funny I imagine how much she would have loved to have been here, to know them, to watch them grow.  

And what about how much my boys have missed?  Hudson was a baby… 4 months old.  He knows Nina only from pictures.  And Porter, well, at 2.5 I doubt much of his memories are his own but those of stories we’ve told them.  I hope they both know how much their Nina loved them. 

When I look at her pictures, when I imagine her here with us, laughing with us and joking and just being here with us… when I imagine it how it SHOULD be, how we WANT it to be… it makes me so sad.  It makes me miss her so much.  I miss our near daily phone calls… our simple chats or her wise advice.  I miss calling her to ask her recipes or questions or how to do things.  I miss calling her to rant about bad days, or to share with her stories about the kids.  I miss being able to tell her goodbye… a real goodbye.  I miss her.  

I was going to add some pictures, but I thought I’d link back to my post about her.  I still can’t read it without crying.  Will I ever?  

And I don’t think I’ll ever look at a balloon in the sky and not think “It’s coming up to you, Cathy!”   After her funeral, we let the kids each release a balloon up to Heaven to Nina (or Nana, as the girls called her).  I can’t believe how little they all were.  How long ago it seems, yet just like yesterday.