This is a Really Real Widow Post.

Tonight I’m having a widow moment.  My chest is heavy and the tears are just behind my eyes and for the first time in months and months I needed to find my cry playlist and just let it play as background noise while I sit at home alone.

You see, In two days I turn 38.

In two days I celebrate the birthday that Parker never got to celebrate and damn it, I’m not supposed to be older than her.

She’s supposed to be 2 years older then me.  We’re supposed to joke about how she’s a cradle robber for dating someone her sisters age.  She’s supposed to pick on me for how I wouldn’t understand because I’m so young.  All of it silly because we really were so close in age.

But I’m not supposed to be older than her.

And I know, somewhere in the back of my head, that this is a silly reason to be upset.  That none of this changes how dead she is, and that technically I’ve been older than her for months now.

But I had a hard time last year too.  Holidays and birthdays and special occasions are just hard, because she’s not here, and I didn’t just lose her in the moment she died, I lost every moment we planned to be together.  I lost growing old with her.

She’s frozen in time at 37 years old.

And I’m still moving forward and she’s not here to see it.  She’s not here to pick on me, she’s not here to love me, she’s not here.

And it shouldn’t be.

As much as I’ve grown this past year, as much as my grief has changed and morphed and become this part of me, there are still times when I want to fight against it with every fiber of my being because sometimes it just doesn’t seem possible that this is real.

I’m not supposed to be older than her.

And this is how I work, I grieve the hardest in the days before an important day, I get it out of the way.  On my actual birthday I’ll have some hard moments but mostly I’ll be able to enjoy it.  The lead up is harder than the actual day.

But tonight it hurts so very much.  Tonight I’m fighting against reality.  Tonight I’m going to let myself hurt and grieve and cry.

Because I’m not supposed to be older than her.