Once, in the distant past, I left the country for a year. I was in the army and had been stationed in the Republic of Korea. I boarded a plane and headed to the other side of the world. I had already been in various trainings for months. I was engaged to be married, and my fiance would be waiting for me to come home. One year. We could do this. We would write to each other. We would call. This was in the early 1990s, so there was no internet. There were no cellphones, at least not in the way we understand them today. It was long distance calls and old fashioned paper notes, sealed with a stamp and sent off via the APO. We had each other and that was enough. We could do a year standing on our heads if needed.
Fast forward. We were happily married. We’d purchased and moved into our first house. We were happy. Rebecca gave birth to our daughter… and within two weeks was hospitalized for heart failure. That lead to a year of recovery. Another one year increment that went by in a blur. It was a long struggle and gone in an instant.
Fast forward. Our daughter was growing so fast. She became this wonderful, beautiful, intelligent person. She spoke another language and was heading off to another country to study abroad for a year. One year. Waiting to see her again. Dealing with more health crisis and trying to keep her informed but not worried. This year seemed to take longer than the others… we missed her but knew she’d be back.
Fast forward. Rebecca’s health issues continued. Getting around was a struggle, but it had been one year since anything serious happened. This year was a short one. It evaporated in a swirl of mist on a hot day. She fell. She struggled, but fell again and again. We had plans, but shelved them all until we were able to get in to see a specialist and try to figure out what was making her balance such an issue. We were one week short of that appointment.
A year is both longer and shorter than one thinks. It’s always relative to what’s going on. A year apart when we knew we would be getting back together was the blink of an eye. A year of recovery from a heart issue was tackled together, and one year was easy. A year apart from our daughter was the ache of knowing we were doing the best thing for her that we could. That year was rough, but we were together.
This past year has disappeared. July 29, 2025 was yesterday. It was also an eon ago. Nothing is right and nothing may ever be right again. I have lost more time during this year to staring into the void than the rest of my life combined. I have no answers. My forever person is gone. She has been gone for a year as of today. I still don’t know if what I am doing is at all right. I keep moving forward, but most of it feels empty. I am adrift without her. I can’t overstate how much she meant to me. My life was her life and her life was my life for more than thirty of those one year steps. More than half of my life. I would give an awful lot to get just one more. Thirty was not enough. Sixty wouldn’t have been enough, even if she claimed that wasn’t something she ever wanted. I wanted it.
In the same moment, I’m glad that she’s no longer in pain. Her life had slowly become more and more limited by her health. She hated being so dependent on others when what she wanted was to get up, get out and help others. She struggled to get up and down. She struggled with her facilities and couldn’t remember things. It hurt her more than she let on, but I could tell. I’m happy that she is beyond those struggles now, even though she has gone ahead without me.
There are so many things… I needed more time. I want her back so very much. I have been weeping non-stop trying to write this. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t tell her how much I loved her enough. I struggle every day, wishing I could have said more to her. She, of course, was far ahead of me on so many levels. Her last words, the very last coherent thing she said was, “I love you”. I think about that every single day. Every time I part from my daughter, weather she’s going out with friends, going to work or just going to bed for the night I make certain I that is the very last thing I say to her. I say it as much as I can now, weather that is from fear or hope or guilt, I don’t know – but it matters.
Find your people. Hug them. Hold them close and tell them you love them. It matters and you don’t know when that chance will be gone.
One year. The pain doesn’t go away. You don’t get over it, you get used to it. There are times when things are almost normal, whatever that means. There are times when everything feels like it’s falling apart again, filling the day with tears. Time passes. Things continue on.
One year.
