May 26, 2026 was five-and-a-half years without my husband.

I missed it.

Someone asked at a family party how long it had been, and I found myself doing the math.

May 26th was thoroughly unremarkable. Client work. Pasta for dinner. Laundry I didn't do. Groceries I procrastinated ordering. A television show before bed.

Five and a half years ago, I couldn't imagine surviving an hour, let alone a week. And for a few years, the twenty-sixth of every month hurt.

Now I occasionally have to look up the date.

I still hate calling it “healing.” I don’t feel healed. I don’t feel like I’m “over” it. But the loss of him is a part of me in the same way that his love is a part of me. I’ve integrated it, somehow.

My mom, who has struggled with her weight her entire adult life, started the GLP1 shots a year ago. She’s lost 66 pounds. She’s frustrated because she has heard stories of others for whom the weight fell off much more quickly and much more drastically. Telling her that the slowness was probably healthier for her body doesn’t help. She is 70 and has spent most of her life waiting for it to begin, and now that she can see the sunset approaching through the trees, she would like to be able to walk without pain before we are burying her next to Eric’s ashes.

I tell her, “Mom, go to a bowling alley and put 6 10lb bowling balls (plus a 5 pound kid ball) into dad’s frame backpack. See how hard it is to lift. 60+ pounds is not nothing.”

She rolls her eyes at me, because her daughter who has a very different body shape and very different life problems, doesn’t get a say. And she’s allowed to be frustrated. It’s more than just weight loss, it’s missing out on her grandchildren’s lives. It’s sitting on the beach under an umbrella while everyone swims, it’s not being able to go on the nature walk because the path isn’t designed for her walker or wheelchair. It’s waiting in a car with a book while everyone else rock climbs or water skis or snowboards. It’s shame. It’s helplessness. It’s so many things.

Those things weigh more than 66 pounds, and she’s still carrying most of them around.

I think about how much my grief weighs. Last Christmas I went bowling with family. I used an 8-pound ball and still hurt my back. The whole morning ached—not just because of the bowling, but because everyone else there still had the people we're missing. Yet somehow the ache wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, coloring everything, as it has in the past. I’ve adjusted—though adjusting doesn’t mean gone.

The ache is there when I see couples holding hands at the park. It’s there when a sister-in-law sends photos of her anniversary trip to Italy with her husband. When I watch someone’s father walk them down the aisle, or hold a grandbaby for the first time. But it’s in all the small moments too; when my son comes home from a date and tells me about how nervous he was, when we enjoy a movie we know Eric would have liked, when I’m in bed watching a stupid reality TV show and he isn’t there to laugh with me.

It's every morning when I wake and he's not already up doing the dishes and feeding the dog.

It’s every Thursday night when I drag the trash bin to the end of the driveway.

It’s watching my kids figure out how to sharpen lawn mower blades via Youtube. It’s me and my youngest learning how to tie a tie via an Instagram reel.

It’s in songs. Or just the feel of the wind on my face after a walk around the lake.

It’s setting my purse on the floor of the car in case his ghost wants to ride along next to me. It’s stretching out my hand and wishing I could feel him hold it.

It’s waking up whenever I see him in a dream and immediately writing it down so I don’t forget, even if it was mostly silly nonsense.

And it’s normal, now. It’s regular. It’s work and kids and balancing the budget and spraying the weeds myself.

That’s what survival is. It’s not the dramatic rescue after being lost at sea. It’s not the moment the rescue crew hands the stuck child up and out of the well. It’s all the time by yourself, drifting through the water. It’s singing the ABCs to yourself in the deep dark at the bottom.

There is no dramatic, triumphant swell of music as the flashbulbs go off and the cameras roll. “She made it! She’s alive!”

It’s just keeping on.

But you guys know this. I’ve bleated about it for going on six years. Grief doesn't go away. We grow around it. The hole is always there.

What feels different five and a half years in is that the focus is no longer on the hole. Or, in the case of this graphic, no longer on the red stain.

The ten-thousand bowling balls will always be there, rattling around in my backpack.

It’s just that now my life is taking place in the empty spaces.