Reese had his first basketball game of the season last night. It came with massive mixed feelings. I love watching him play, but the last time I saw my mom was at one of his games. It was about two weeks before she died. It wasn't at the same place, but it still brought up feelings of trauma and guilt. I had been home for almost a week from Georgia and hadn't seen her yet, and then she was gone. So I had gone almost two weeks without seeing her. I know that I can't change that, and that I was doing what I thought was best for me and my family at the time, but I wish so bad I could go back and scoop her up and be there for her more. Maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe not. It doesn't really help to play that mental game, but it is so hard not to. The start of basketball means it has almost been a year since I heard her voice, saw her smile, listened to her silly jokes, asked her about her life. It fucking sucks. It's like I had a whole different life before and it is almost dream-like. Not in a rose colored glasses kind of way, because there was still so much shit happening. But in a way like, did that really happen? Was that really even real? And then if I think back to before my dad died... Like before he started to lose his memory... Then it seems almost like a book I read a long time ago. A book I loved, and I remember the story, but it has been so long that I have forgotten some of the details, and I really only remember the major plot points, good and bad.... A few details come back here and there, but for the most part, it just seems like fiction. 

I always knew I would lose my parents. I knew I wouldn't be old, I worried about it when I was a teenager, but I always thought it would be peaceful. And it was so fucking traumatic. And then Kade... Oh, God... I just almost can't let myself think about him. I really don't because I can't. It hurts too much. How could my my most beautiful brother, the most authentic soul be gone? 

I feel like a broken record. Having these feelings. Going to therapy. Saying the same things over and over, and having her say back, "It's hard".... but it's true. It feels so weird that only some people know that mom killed herself. It wasn't obvious like Kade. And we weren't sure at first. And we didn't want everyone to feel the hurt that they felt over Kade all over again. So just our immediate family knows... We didn't tell the aunts and uncles an cousins. They might have inclinations, but in the end, nothing changes. It doesn't bring her back. We wanted to protect her from judgements. I wanted to protect them from pain. No matter what, it still hurts.