“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” — Robert Frost

As I take in the sunshine on a beautiful July 5th day, the weather similar to another July 5th day eleven years ago, I find myself sitting in gratitude, grateful for all that has entered our lives. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the exciting and the mundane. While I would not want to repeat some of the days, I am aware that if we had not lived them in the past we would not be where we are today.

As the anniversary of the accident draws near each year, I find myself contemplating the lives we have lived after everything fell apart. It has been eleven long years since that fateful day. Since our lives were dramatically changed. Since Chris almost left us. Since a miracle kept him with us.

Eleven years is a long time. So much has shifted in our lives. So much life has been lived, and as the years have passed us by, we have moved further and further away from the accident and into the lives we are now living. Though it felt like it would never happen, the accident has become a distant memory rather than a constant influence in our daily lives.

Life does, in fact, go on. With one foot in front of the other. One day, one week, one month, one year, life goes on. We keep living, and in living we change and we grow and we become something different. Someone different. Time passes, and we cannot help but to carry on. To live. Even if there are times we are barely making it through the day, we are still here. I suppose this is what life is. Simply, being alive. Inhaling. Exhaling. Breathing. Crying. Laughing. Loving. Existing.

The last eleven years have been life. They have been the passage of time and the growing into what it is we are meant to become. Life will never be perfect, of this fact, I am quite certain. There will always be something to contend with. Some obstacle to overcome, or some mountain to climb. There will always be a life to live as long as we are alive. And life is messy. It was designed that way. It isn’t meant to be neat and tidy. We are supposed to get dirty and bruised along life’s journey. This is how we grow into the spaces that might not be available to us otherwise. By accepting that sometimes, for some reason, it’s supposed to hurt.

And though I may, at times, fight against it. Pushing back at the darkness, instead of focusing on the light. Trying to control that which cannot be controlled. To change that which cannot be changed, To will into being that which does not want to be. I am learning. I am learning to let the wind guide me. Adjusting my sails only when it is necessary. And when the nightmares come for me, I try to breathe through them, remembering, though there will be hard days. Days that almost break us. Most of our days are made by simply living. Creating the world we want to live in. Being us. Being human. Grateful that the passage of time is a given, and that within the passage of time, life goes on.