Fucking first times, my therapist calls them. First holidays, significant occasions, anniversary of the death. The first time after you’ve lost someone, lost a child. It caught me off guard the first year, things that I didn’t expect took me to my knees. Easter, why did that leave me weeping, lashing out at everyone, feeling like a horrible failure? We weren’t religious and even if we were, Nel was most certainly not. She’d called me from prison the last Easter she was alive, Happy Easter! I tried to chirp at her. She stopped me mid-happy.
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