One year. 

Around 1 pm today, it was one year since my life changed. I now live in this liminal space, the “before” and the “after.”

A little after 1 pm a year ago, your life was taken, you were hit by a car, by a driver not paying attention. Your body was tended to by strangers, one who was a mother, who held you as others attended to you before the paramedics arrived. It was minutes from you being hit to being on route to a hospital, where more people attended to your body, trying to will life back into it with everything that was taught. There was nothing to be done, you were gone. 

It was a little after 2 pm, I received the call. Every living part of me vibrated with the knowing, even before the doctor delivered the news. I can still feel how my body felt like it was going to collapse, walking from the clinic I was working, to the emergency room, being let in by security, waiting for a social worker and nurse to lead me into the ‘Family Room.” I can still feel the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, as I sat in a room that retained the energy of the worst nightmare becoming a reality. I still feel the tension of the knowing, and not being able to see you, because the police where still investigating. 

Finally, a nurse snuck us back, to see you. Despite the sheer violence of being hit by a car, you laid there peacefully, not a single line of worry or pain marked your face, your right arm extended like you were going to wake any moment, the final bits of color and warmth, slowly leaving your body. It was jarring to see all the medical equipment in you, but it was also jarring to be in the emergency room morgue and not in a room. The second time I saw you, the warmth and color had faded. The medical equipment was gone, and the finality of your death of your death settled over me in a way that words can never fully capture. In that moment, the life I had known was gone.  

I walked out of the hospital to my bicycle, pedaling home seeing the sky open, made me feel that even heaven was sad.

I pedaled my bike to the scene, but it was like it never happened. Not a trace of the tragedy that happened just hours before. I got home and crawled into her bed. 

It has been a year.

Tuesdays still arrive like clockwork. Around one o’clock, my body remembers before my mind does. An ordinary Tuesday became the dividing line between the life that I knew and the life that I live now. 

I think about that Tuesday often, her going to work on her bike and had no other agenda other than clean her room. I had food in the fridge ready for dinner, a dinner that will never happen. I think about the woman who held you when I could not, every day grateful that you were not alone. I still wonder who you would be becoming, and who I would have become beside you. 

But I also think about what your life continues to ask of mine. 

Now, I carry you and that Tuesday. 

As difficult it is to get up and participate in life, I manage. I have managed to support instrumental safety changes, grow and learn, despite wanting to curl up and give up. You carried so much strength and fortitude; it would be a disservice to your life for me to just stop. I miss you beyond words and keep going because of your strength and perseverance.