4 months without Cassidy

4 months….I sat down to write this post and realized I don’t have some profound lesson or new perspective to share this month. I just miss him.

Some months are easier to write than others…this one isn’t. Maybe because grief has settled into something quieter. Not smaller, just quieter. It’s no longer the chaos of hospital rooms or impossible decisions. It’s the everyday reality of living a life that still doesn’t feel like the one I was supposed to have.

I still think about him every day. I still catch myself reaching for my phone to tell him something, looking for him in places I know he won’t be, finding myself wondering what he’d think about something funny that happened at work, a new Pokémon release, or another Taylor Swift lyric that somehow puts words to feelings I can’t.

Life keeps asking me to move forward. Work continues, bills still have to be paid, the girls still need to be fed…the calendar just keeps turning and somehow, all of that exists alongside the reality that the person I wanted to tell about my day isn’t here anymore.

I voted for the first time without him recently..I fucking hated it. It felt wrong in a way I can’t fully explain. Voting was always something we did together, something we talked about, something we cared about side by side. Standing there without him, making those choices alone, just made the absence louder.

The top it off, the Texas Democratic Convention is this weekend. I’m so happy for my friends who are going. I know how much it means, how exciting it is, how full of energy and purpose those spaces can be but it hurts my heart to think about it.

Because it’s another thing we shared. Another place I would have been with him. Another memory that now only exists in the version of life we were supposed to have.

I’ve realized there isn’t some finish line for grief. There isn’t a month where you suddenly wake up and everything makes sense again. There are just days…some are lighter, some are heavier, and some, like today, are simply filled with missing him.

4 months feels impossibly long since I’ve heard his voice and somehow, impossibly short since I held his hand.

I don’t have a neat way to wrap this up, I just wanted to say his name today. I miss you, Cass…4 months later, I still love you just as much as I did the day you left.