Four Years

Four years changes everything. Four years has been my entire college education. It was my entire high school education. In four years I went from a know-it-all teenager to a lost twenty something. Four years can hurt, it’s full of firsts and lasts. Four years seems like forever, but is gone with a breath.

Four years ago today was the day you drew your last breath. You’re heart stopped and with it your story ended. I was blessed with 18 amazing years knowing you and loving you and being loved by you. You were a constant. To me it felt too soon. But I had only been alive a fourth of your life and you lived an amazing life.

In four years I’ve heard so many stories, stories from when you were in the war, when you had met grandma, when you were my age. I saw the end, but I never thought about the beginning. That time exists beyond the moments when we occupied the earth. Four years has made me think about how truly fragile our connections with each other are.

I couldn’t have been there for your whole life, and you were destined to depart from mine. You knew my entire life until the last four years. We only got 18 years. Others get less. Some only get days, minutes, seconds. Some people live an entire life in 18 seconds. We were lucky for the time we had.

Four years has hurt, has felt like loss, has wrecked me. Four years taught me to make time count because it isn't guaranteed. That constants are terms used in laboratories and not to measure a life. But emptiness can only teach so much.

The time we had together was better. You taught me about determination, unconditional love, sacrifice. You taught me to be a good person. To stand up for my thoughts and beliefs, but to consider where others are coming from.

I’m always going to miss you, whether it’s been four years or forty. I’ll always have questions that you can’t answer. I’ll always have the picture of you taking me to see the “moo moo tows” or the one of me trying to get as far away from the fish as the camera would allow. I’ll always have our memories.

I’m sorry it took four years to realize how amazing 18 had been.