# One Year

Time is an elusive bandit, a thief, a powerful wave whose momentum cannot be slowed or stopped. No one can control or manipulate it. It permeates every aspect of our lives. It commands us, defines us. We live our lives according to the seasons it rules.

We naively believe we have some understanding of the concept, what it is, how it works. Yet, the true value of it isn’t appreciated until there is so little of it left. The years dash past until suddenly, you realize what a fool you’ve been. You realize what a precious commodity you’ve wasted, and let slip by you without care or consideration.

Every year the leaves bud to a lush green, then turn to fiery oranges and reds, yellows, then fall and rot. Like trees, whose trunks add rings to mark the passage of time and their growth, we start to show the same on our bodies, on our necks. We gather rings, to mark our march from the innocent, unlined, fresh skin of childhood to the scarred, lined barrier of those of us that have survived a few decades. For every tick of the clock forward, there is a piece of the past we cant ever get back.

We learn, we grow, sometimes not quickly enough. \240In kindergarten, we learn to tell time, how to read a clock or a watch. We understand that 60 seconds equals a minute, and 60 of those equal an hour. Twenty four hours makes for a day and so on. What we don’t realize its that’s only a measurement, a way to take a concept that is not truly understood and give it some meaning. They don’t teach us it’s value.

That comes for most of us when suddenly, time, no longer just a concept, or a mode of measurement, becomes more real and more understandable. A month, a week, a day or even an hour becomes a tangible thing you can feel slipping through your hands. Suddenly the future is flying at you faster than you can comprehend, and the memories of the past come spinning, whirling by.

Every laugh, every argument, all the hurts, all the moments of joy and happiness, all the phone calls, all of the vacations, all the traditions, all the tears and smiles, all of the misunderstandings and all of the knowing looks, all thoughts of what was to come are suddenly thrust to the present. If time itself were able to explode, at that moment it seems it should. How can any one moment hold all of that? Yet it does. And then, it goes on.

As it moves forward, it does so minus something, or someone, you thought would march on too. At what point, at what day, or month or minute do you stop wishing that person were still marching along beside you? Or, at least, when does it stop hurting so much that they aren’t?

A year later I haven’t stopped wishing or hurting. A year later I still want to call, or video call and only see half her face because she has no idea how to hold the phone so I can see all of her. A year later I haven’t stopped mourning the fact that I won’t spend part of a summer with her at her most loved place. A year later I haven’t stopped feeling bad for all the times I was a brat, too immature to understand what she was going through, or never even knowing what she went through. A year later I am crying folding underwear because every year, without fail, she gave me some for Christmas. A year later I am still waiting for the cherry chip cake she always made me for my birthday. A year later I am sending her messages on her Instagram page because I found I failed to delete it. A year later I still remember in vivid detail following the ambulance she was riding in, knowing she wouldn’t make it to this Christmas.

On December 15th she asked me "Betsy, can I go?" I didn’t comprehend. "Betsy, IS IT OK if I go?" On December 17th she was gone. A year later I still regret not calling Shelby over for a last kiss just a minute sooner, \240because, by the time I said anything, she had already left us. I don’t want anyone to ever tell me she is somewhere better. Where she should be is with those who love her best. However, I know she doesn’t hurt, and I can only hope that wherever she is, and no matter how much time passes, she can still feel our love.

Moo, we miss you, always.