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As I write this, it’s Easter Sunday. Our third Easter without Ryan. It seems impossible that life goes on in spite of our gigantic loss and our broken hearts. But it does. Time marches on and waits for no one. Our wounds scab over enough we can continue living, as preposterous as it may seem.

Being back in Modesto has been a mixed blessing for me. The good definitely outweighs the not so good and I’m glad to be here. Glad to be back among friends; glad to have work I love; glad to be plugged into the community again. The not-so-good parts are the painful reminders of our old life and so many “Ryan things”.

I am back at church each Sunday morning just like in the years we lived here before moving to Sacramento when our whole family attended together. Now it’s just me. Ron has “sanctuary phobia” and can’t bring himself to go back into the place where Ryan’s funeral was held; Ross is in Sacramento and in that young adult stage where church isn’t important; and Ryan is dead. So I go alone and sit in the same general vicinity of where our family sat so many times. I “see” Ryan everywhere in that church. I see him coming in late and climbing over people in the pews to get to our spot, smiling sweetly at everyone he trampled. I see him at the altar rail praying after taking communion. He did it every time he took communion, without fail. Ryan was a big “pray-er” and he never failed to get on his knees and pray at the railing. Taking communion makes me cry now and I can’t bear to go to that railing myself.

All the things I love about Modesto are also the things that remind me of my old life. I miss that old life so much. I realize life is about changing and nothing stays the same but yet I long for the old days before our little family became wounded so deeply.