It's been five years since you left this Earth – five years too long. Five years ago I held your hand and watched you take your last breath and unwillingly had to tell you goodbye. Five years ago I stood over you, hugging your lifeless body wondering what the rest of my life without you would be like, yet it was too painful to think about. Five years ago whenever you left, everyone told me that "time heals all wounds" and that "it will get easier." They were wrong. It's five years later and it still hurts like it was yesterday. I imagine the pain won't dull any in the next five years either.

It's been five years since you've left this Earth, and out of the 1,825 days that have passed without you here, not a single one of them went by without me thinking about you. It's been five years that you've been gone and I still find myself picking up my phone to call you, coming into the house expecting you to be there, or seeing something in town and wanting to buy it for you – only to remember that you're not here anymore.

It's been five years of long nights filled with ugly crying, hate-filled prayers at the fact that God took you from me, and deep sadness. It's been five years of me visiting your gravesite every time I drive by, five years of visiting your old favorite restaurants you would take me to, and five years of telling anyone that will listen old stories of you.

Five years after you left this Earth and it still feels like it was yesterday. The pain is still so real. The time hasn't healed anything. It hasn't gotten any better. Everyone was so wrong five years ago. I know that five years from now, the pain won't be any more dull and the memories will still be so vivid and the sadness will still be so real – however, five years from now I will have five more years of looking back on our old memories and smiling. Memories are all that I have left of you five years after you left this Earth, but I guess they will have to do until five years turns into fifty years and I can see you again face to face and spend eternity together- an eternity that can make five years feel like five seconds.