My birthday hurt.

The holidays will be hard.

Mother’s Day will bring me to my knees.

But, more than those times, I will miss you in the margins. Those little places in life that shouldn’t matter, but they do.

When I’m walking to the parking lot and I don’t have to slow down to make sure you’re ok–that you are behind me and making progress. Knowing that if I stop to wait you will also stop and glare at me until I go again. No special treatment for you. No acknowledgment that your steps are slowing. That I might not have you forever.

When I’m shopping and wishing I had just lost you in the aisles like so many times before. Desperately hoping to find you around the next corner enraptured with an olive bar or a new kind of cheese. Or talking to some stranger about Le Mis.

When…