I was on the phone with my mom last night, and she tells me that she decided last week that she and my dad would drive down to Monterey early next week. They would leave on Monday morning and come back Wednesday evening. “Your dad works so hard that I told him that we should take a short trip and enjoy,” she said. My parents have been to Monterey more times than I can count (they like what they are used to), and I guess it is an improvement that they are going somewhere instead of just saying home all the time, but then it suddenly hits me today that the real reason that they are going away is because my mom doesn’t want to be at home when the anniversary of Ed’s passing comes on Tuesday. It took me over a day to realize this.

All those words still sound terrible to me and trigger tears and stomach knots in me: “Ed’s passing,” “Ed’s death,” “Ed’s gone,” “Ed’s not here anymore,” “the anniversary of Ed’s passing.” I don’t really want to face the reality that he’s been gone from my life for almost an entire year. Hell, when thinking about my bridal shower being in San Francisco, I still thought about it as though he was still living at home and still sleeping in the same room that we shared growing up. In many ways, his death is still not real to me, and maybe it will never really be fully real to me. I’ll never know for sure.