Eric’s fifth year time was yesterday. I had three kids home, with one stuck in Utah due to his work schedule.

We opened some collector cards, got tacos from our favorite taco truck, went to see Wicked For Good, and talked about starting the Christmas decorations (and then didn’t), talked about Dad, and discussed visiting the grave (and then didn’t - we’ll go today).

The fifth anniversary theme is “wood” so we’re getting this ornament for Eric’s memory tree with “I love you!” in his handwriting.

Five years for me is extremely surreal. I went to Utah last week for Katie’s dance performance and cried the entire way. I hadn’t had a good melt down in a while, so I guess I was overdue. I was trying to make time make sense and I just couldn’t. The only other big huge life altering milestone I have in my life that compares to Eric dying is our marriage. And when I think of us five years into our marriage and compare it to five years without him, my brain breaks a little.

The two things are obviously so different. One is full of youthful hope and new beginnings — two naive kids just starting a life together, babies having babies, you know. The other is devastation and loss and bone crushing sadness. But there are some similarities. Both require reinvention. Both require growing through hard things. Both are full of love and both even involve hope — different flavors of hope, but hope nonetheless.

I dunno. I really don’t like searching for meaning in grief stuff, and that’s not really what I’m trying to do here. I was just trying to wrap my head around five whole years.

It isn’t really possible, I’m finding. Five years of marriage was three kids, our first house, a growing business, a sense of stability and a growing understanding that we’d lucked the hell out and married well. We were becoming best friends. We were having so much fun with our young family and having fun with each other too.

(I’m not trying to stuff us on a postmortem pedestal, I remember crying a lot and struggling to align his love language [acts of service] with mine [words of affirmation] and we had silly fights and pregnancy was taking a toll on my health. But I know we had it good. Really good.)

Comparing that to five years of widowhood? Good god.

The first three years is a blur, honestly. I’ve said it before but sincerely, I do not know how we survived. Jake tried to unalive himself. Nate had to stuff a lot of feelings down to make up for his older brother falling to pieces. Katie graduated high school by the skin of her teeth. Ben had to grow up incredibly and heartbreakingly fast. Our house flooded. THREE TIMES. I had to completely restructure my relationships with my parents and my in-laws. I lost friends. I woke up every morning wishing I was dead and knowing I couldn’t be because I had these kids who needed me.

I still really don’t know who I am in this post-Eric world. Jake tells me all the time that I’m carrying this family on my back; that I’m the reason everyone is okay. And that’s wonderful. I’m not going to fight him on it, because that’s how kids should get to feel about their only remaining parent. But I’ll tell you guys, I do not feel like the hero in this situation.

But I do feel proud of us all, collectively. We are all still here. We are all still doing it. It’s not perfect or ideal, or how any of us would want things to be, but we’re still getting up in the morning and that’s kind of a big deal.