In two weeks, my baby girl will graduate from high school –
the countdown to the end. One by one, things are starting to end. And, with
each of her senior lasts, she is one step closer to that moment that’s played
in our head for years, walking across the stage on graduation day.
It’s a moment that the Class of 2016 has looked forward to since
August. But as the day’s inch closer and
closer to May 31st, a fact has become increasingly more real: Tommy
won’t be there.
It’s something we are all struggling with. For us,
graduation is a reminder of all the things he has missed and will miss. It’s knowing that he won’t be there to watch his
sister with that huge smile on his face. That he won’t be here to tease her insistently,
and that the family pictures that are taken will feel incomplete. Makaya won’t get a hug while hearing him tell her
how proud he is of her, and he won’t be able to purposefully embarrass her just
for laughs.
But it’s even more than all of that. It’s realizing that he will
never know his sister as an adult. That he will miss not just her high school
graduation, but her college graduation as well. It’s the fact that she has made
decisions about her future and is moving on to create her own life. A life he
will never know.
Amidst all the excitement about graduating and moving on to
new things is an underlying fear. As much as she has tried to embrace changes
in her life, change still makes us all uneasy. Despite all of the changes that
have occurred since Tommy died almost two years ago, these changes seem harder.
It scary to know that she will no longer
be surrounded by family and friends on a day-to-day basis who support and love
her. I fear that it will be easier for her
memories of him to fade.
Yet, I know she has become the person
she is because of her deep loss. And I know he would be proud. The truth is it’s hard to be thrilled for my
baby girl this graduation because a part of our family is missing. It’s more than just the emotions of her
officially beginning a new chapter of her life, moving off to college, and
becoming independent…..it’s that she is the only child I have left and I don’t
want to let her go even though I know I have to.
