I recently survived my mom’s fourth death anniversary. Honestly it was fairly horrible. I didn’t tell the kids. I didn’t want them to worry. It seems most people understand when you say you’re sad because it’s the one year anniversary since your parent died, but when it’s four years, people do a sort of questioning mental head tilt, as if to say, oh, that’s still a thing heavily affecting you? YES. It still hits as hard as it did during year one, maybe not always as often, but oh, can it hit. It’s almost worse because in the beginning you expect to feel grief most of the time, but after four years it can sneak up on you and pull the chair out from behind you as you attempt to sit down. That’s what it’s like to grieve for four years.

I posted a picture on Facebook of us on the Niagara River–six-year-old me standing on the wooden dock, with knobby knees, posing, arms akimbo, smiling big, golden hair up in two pigtails like miniature bananas protruding from my head, thick and shiny golden bangs, wearing rolled at the waist gray shorts and a baby blue tank top with the number 44. My older brother stands in the bay below, with water up to his thighs, a sinewy and shirtless ten-year-old, in soaked cutoff jean shorts. Our mom lounged on the bare wood of the dock, wearing a high-waisted bikini with wide black and white diagonal stripes and matching halter top. Her dyed blonde hair reaches to just below her chin, in curls the size of buttery croissants. She’s smiling and doesn’t look tired. She looks happy. We must have been happy.

As my eyes crawled over the details of the photo, I imagined that cold river and how the fast moving deep parts could sweep me away. The constant waves and swiftly moving current could pull me over Niagara Falls if I swam out and let go. The rocks below could smash my bones. Maybe it would take away the pain that is still here, so many years later.

Four years gone and I still feel empty. The tiny muscles of my smile are still numb, unsure, and don’t work like they used to. My heart still has a hole shaped like her. I’ve tried to fill it previously with merlot and tears, and today I tried to satiate the ache by looking through the old photos. I was a fool to think that ache could be dulled, even for a day. Looking back and letting those old images and memories flare up in my heart pulled and poked at the painful spots.

It stoked the fire. I cried until I’d amassed a pile of kleenex, then crumpled two fists of used white tissues and threw them away. This is the way it is. The way it will be. I want so badly to think of her and be with her, but doing so makes my gut clench so hard that some might consider it an abdominal exercise. It is confusing to desperately want something that ends up hurting us.

I put the photos away and instead scrolled on social media (which, as usual, was a mistake). The shame of jealousy flickered and flashed in me as I observed other people whose moms got to be alive.

Why me? Why her?! my heart silently wailed again (so my kids wouldn’t hear).

I don’t like the long haul, knowing I can’t set this down. The grief of losing your parent is like a scar, but one that spreads and grows with each passing year, rather than fading into the skin and gradually subsiding with time.

I want to run away, but this grief scar is etched into me. It burned me, like a hot iron brand. It is with me, and I don’t feel comforted. Rather I feel cheated, jealous, sad, and confused, since I am still living behind an invisible barrier, a membrane of grief, stretchy but strong. It keeps me inside so I can’t ever touch the regular world again.

My writing has been hard. I’ve been resisting it. I am ashamed. I wanted to be here on this blog for others. I wanted to inspire. This writing was supposed to help people, but I’ve been sitting here wondering if I’m a fraud for telling you to bounce and not break when grief piles on your back, all the while I feel a crack spreading through me, threatening to split my core.

I am not a grief expert or a mental health professional. I’m just a person on the internet who used to be a daughter, floating through life and hoping to land safely.

I dream of laughing again someday, of really laughing and feeling it all over. I actually cry when I think too hard about it. I want it.

It’s terrifying to experience just how empty a heart can be after such a great loss, and how that feeling is sustained over many years. It makes me afraid to care, afraid to love anyone new. I want to open the door and let people in around me, but I know I would desperately whisper please never leave me, which is a promise they cannot keep.

I wanted to be here for you, dear reader, but I think today I need you more than you need me. I am embarrassingly and quietly whispering to you (and the entire internet I suppose) please don’t leave me.

I am afraid. I need you. My mother died, and it keeps shaking me to the core, even after over four years, in ways that only you who have also lost a parent can understand. We are here together. We won’t break together. Hold on. Breathe and keep going. Our parents would want us to live and live well.