Today marks one year since my mom passed away.

Anyone who has lost someone close knows that the first year is filled with a series of quiet milestones. The first Christmas without them. The first Thanksgiving. The first Easter. The birthdays they aren’t there for. Each one arrives with a moment where you feel their absence a little more clearly. Over time, you realize that the first year isn’t just about grief — it’s about learning how the world continues to turn while you slowly learn how to carry their memory with you in it.

For me, my mom passed away just six days before my birthday last year, so today also marks the closing of that very first cycle of “firsts.” The holidays, the moments, the days when I instinctively reached for the phone before remembering. Somehow, we made it through all of them. Not perfectly, not easily — but we made it through.

Now a new year begins, one that isn’t measured by firsts, but by memories. The love doesn’t disappear, and neither do the lessons or the laughter. They simply change form and maybe that’s the quiet truth of grief: the first year teaches you how to live with it, and the years that follow remind you that love never really leaves.

Grief never truly goes away – we simply learn to carry it differently, side by side with the love and memories that will always remain. 

Wishing you love and light,

~Anne Dennish~