This is it.

I came to a realization this weekend. This is as easy as it gets. Grief that is. I have reached the point where it isn't going to get any easier.

When Emma died, it hurt so bad. It was a physical, emotional, spiritual, all encompassing pain. Something I have never felt before and not since. I felt like I was suffocating from the inside. It was like labor, but without the amazing person at the end. Or so I thought.

It has been almost 6 years. In that six years the pain has steadily leveled out. It isn't that intense raw pain anymore. It is an ache. An ache that is always there. I always miss her. I always think of her and wish she were here. It just isn't the all consuming pain anymore. It is changing, it's not just my pain anymore. It is my children wishing their sister was here. It is them crying that they miss her. It is them praying that she will "come back to life" soon. My heart aches and breaks not only for my pain, but for theirs.

Six years...I just can't believe that. I am a different person now than I was then. There is a definite distinction between Kim and Jeremy living in Kansas versus Kim and Jeremy living in Utah. They are not the same people. It is two different lives completely. Sure, we still have some of the same friends, but when Emma died, so did those people. They had to pick up, move on and forge a new life. A post-death life.

When Emma was born I was 25, almost 26. I was young, hopeful and blissfully naive. There is nothing wrong with that and it is something I wish on all parents. I had hard days. I suffer from depression and have for many years. Because of that, there were days where I really struggled. But, I was so happy. I loved my darling girl, my sweet husband and my life. Jeremy was finishing school, we were in a great apartment, lived close to his folks and my brother and his family. Life was good. I just didn't know how good it was.

When Emma died, like I said, we died too. The innocence, the naivety, the pure joy...they were gone in an instant. I think I walked around in a zombie state for...well I don't know how long. We moved to Utah, away from most of the people who knew and loved Emma. We started a new life. I met new people, made new friends, had more children.

But these people, the ones I met after Emma, they don't know who I was before. They don't know what I looked like as a brand new Mother. They don't know how much I loved her. They don't know all of me. And many of those who knew me then don't see me regularly now.

It's a bit confusing at times, trying to marry the two of me. The before Emma died and after she died Kim.

That is where I am right now. I am trying to figure out how to bring a bit of that pure joy back into my life. I am trying to be a cautiously optimistic Mom. How Emma died was an accident, that she died is not.

If God needs another one of my children, I don't want to live regretting time I could have spent with them. I don't want to regret anything. So I, like the flowers around me, am blooming. I am becoming someone new and different. I am not the same girl I was 6 years ago. I am learning to live with my loss, and find the beauty and joy in my everyday life.

And there really is much beauty and joy to be found.