When my sister died, I kept hearing the phrase “the new normal.” Everyone kept saying that adjusting would be hard to what our lives would be now. Everything would be different, and now, being almost two years out, I’m starting to see this as true.

If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know that the first year flies by. It’s all a blur and nothing really seems real without them. It seems like you're watching your life from outside of your body. All the holidays seem weird, and you just feel disconnected from it all. Traditions don’t seem the same, but they’re so blurry you don’t seem to notice during the first year. After a year, you think that since it seems like a while since they passed, you’re ok. You have good days and bad days, and sometimes, you don’t even realize how hard it is.

The second year, though, is a completely different story. The second year means that it’s the second time a holiday has come around, and they aren’t there. You start to realize that them not being there is now the “new normal.” In some ways, this is even more heartbreaking. The first year, like I said, everything feels numb. Everything is new, but that’s to be expected. I had convinced myself that I was ok, but the second year is when it’s really hitting home. She isn’t coming to Christmas this year. She wasn’t at Thanksgiving, and she won’t be at Easter. That’s how it was last year, but this year, it’s just as hard, even though I’d talked myself into the lie that I was ok, but I’m not. And that is perfectly ok.

The holidays are hard when someone isn’t there that you want to be there so badly. You just have to adjust to living with the new normal of them being gone, and realize that they are there and always will be, in your heart.