Sometimes Numbers Hurt

14... It's just a number, but it always sends a knife into my stomach. Both in March and May, the 14th are days that I was forever changed. Days that sent my world on edge. Time stood still for me and those I love, but the sun still shone, and others still went about their every day. I want to scream sometimes, "Don't you know what TODAY is? Don't you know what is lost?" I have other numbers with the same meaning. I try to remind myself that they are only numbers. That this day is only a moment in the time that really mattered. The time I got to love them, and the time that they made a difference on this earth. I promised to celebrate their life, not hold on to their death. Still, today stops me in my tracks. I'm frozen. I'm hurting. I want to erase time and go back and change so much. To just be around them more. To make more memories. To take more pictures. To soak up every memory, to memorize their voice, to treasure their bear-hugs.

Numbers have changed me. I am not the same person as I was driving to school that morning a year ago. I am a little more sad. A little stronger. A little more broken. I now have no patience for intolerance. I can't be around negativity. I want to shake the people that don't appreciate what they have and tell them to do just what I didn't do. Memorize their eyes, and their voice, and their laugh. Cherish their hugs, and their shenanigans, and even the arguments. Because one day they might get ripped from you, and you'll realize how lost you are in a world without them.

I am lost in a world without them. They are bigger then their number. So much bigger. But today that number is a reminder of what we won't have. That we walk around in the world with a broken heart that still beats. That we aren't ready to say goodbye. And its OK, because we live in this beautifully broken, tragic world, that sometimes just sucks. I can't wait for the day when God HIMSELF will wipe every tear from our eyes. It will be a beautiful day. But until that day, I'll carry them with me.