Four days since your birthday. Four. I won’t send a card anymore. I won’t call anymore. My sister claims we have no grandparents, and there is a part of that that is 100% accurate. Our biological grandparents are all gone–the 2 before our births and the 2 after. But you’re still here (or so I assume–I have to think someone, somehow would let us know if you weren’t). I will never stop loving you, but I’m not sure if I can ever fully forgive you. And that’s the honest truth.

A friend reminded me that every family has its difficulties, its quirks, its issues and burdens to take on. Part of me has been happy to let you go, and part of me it still gets very sad to think you live so close and yet choose to be so far away. Family isn’t always easy. We all have things to deal with and work through. But in all honesty there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to sweep it under the rug or pretend word weren’t exchanged and that feelings and hearts weren’t forever changed.

You aren’t what I remembered. You could probably say the same about me. Funny how sometime our unique perspectives bring us to the same place but on opposite sides.