I feel raw, like I am walking around without my outer layer of skin. I miss my mom so much that it physically hurts. I can step into the moment that I watched her pass away and the emotion is so real that it could have been last night. In reality it will be six years this Saturday: 2190 days since I have seen her face, 52,560 hours since I have heard her voice, 3,153,600 minutes since I have felt her skin. But I can close my eyes and still remember every detail about her. The way she smelled after a run, the way her nails felt when she scratched my back, the sound of her voice as she sang in the shower and while she cooked.

For a long time I didn't want to let go of the pain and loss I felt, because even though the emotions felt horrible, they were real. Anything real was better than the smoky feeling of nothing inside; my sadness padded what was otherwise a stripped core.

I remember babysitting my niece one night a few months after my mom's passing. It was past Ry's bedtime and she had gotten up sobbing, "I want my mommy." We sat on the kitchen floor of my sister's house and cried together because we both missed our moms. I feel sure that Riley has no memory of that night, and I can now look back at that moment with the kind of distance that feels more like empathy for my 19 year old self rather than pity for myself today.

Six years have passed, and although I think about my mom every single hour of my life, I no longer try to hold on to the pain of her absence. My emotions always run a little high around the anniversary of her passing, but typically I just remember her with a glad heart (with a few sad moments interspersed). However, this year feels more challenging than the past few.

My dad is closing on his house tomorrow. The big, empty rooms feel like a manifestation of my emotions while I watched my mom's health decline within their walls. For that reason, cleaning it out and saying goodbye has been cathartic. Starting to be free from that space feels exactly like the slow melt from pain and sadness of losing her to warm memories of her life. I love the idea of a new family moving in and fixing it up, but it is hard to loosen my grip and let it slip away...