You're in the arms of an angel, may you find some comfort here

It has been a year.

A year of difficult milestones, a year of the ebb and flow of grief, a year of heartbreak compounded by stress and depression and more heartbreak.

On one hand, it's hard to believe it's been a year already. On the other, so much has happened, I've caromed from Death Valley-esque lows to periods of hope and back again, that the year has felt like five.  Or ten. I feel older and sadder and mortal in a way I never used to.

For some reason, I didn't think the year anniversary would be as hard as other milestones.  Events like Thanksgiving, or Emma's birthday, or the day she would have graduated from high school - those were dates that were so intimately intertwined with her.  Her absence, and the realization, over and over again, that she is gone and we will never see her again, never hug her again, never go to a post-Thanksgiving hockey game with her again, never surf with her again - the realization that she will never get to experience life as she should have -- it's a visceral, gut-wrenching feeling that makes my chest tighten and my eyes immediately start to water.

I have never been one to go from not crying to bawling in an instant - it takes a while for the emotion to build and manifest itself in tears.  But now it can happen in a matter of seconds, when I'll suddenly think of her and suddenly be sobbing.

My brother and sister-in-law have been gracious in agreeing to send me some of her ashes, so I can scatter them from the top of a mountain.  The juxtaposition of the wonderful, beautiful, life affirming hike I did last year, followed by Emma's death four days later, has turned the act of walking, of hiking, of being out in nature, into a transformative experience for me, and one that I will forever associate with her.

This weekend I plan to climb to the sky again, pushing my physical and mental endurance but also reinforcing the miraculous life and health that I continue to enjoy.  I will be carrying her with me - literally carrying a physical piece of her that I will touch and hold until I can't climb any higher.

And then I will release her to the heavens, into the beauty and majesty and wonder of the Rocky Mountains and the sky above, so that she can fly even higher, forever.