8 Years Later: Some Things Change, Some Things Never Will

It’s been almost eight years since you left this world.

Eight whole years.

And somehow, everything has changed — and nothing has.

My days no longer look like they used to. I wake up in a different home, drive a different car, walk through a life I had to build without you. Our son has grown up. He’s taller than me now — growing into a young man I wish you could see. He carries your quiet strength. He carries us both.

The world around me has shifted and reshaped itself in ways I never imagined. But you are still with me — in spirit, in soul, in the quiet moments between breaths.

They say every cell in our body renews itself every eight years. If that’s true, then not a single part of me is the same person you once touched, held, laughed with. And yet, somehow… I still feel you in everything.

I still sleep on the left side of the bed.

There’s still an empty pillow on the right.

I still wake up thinking of you — as if my soul checks in with yours each morning.

I still only make one cup of tea, and every day it feels a little too quiet without you in it.

I miss the morning hug that grounded me, and the way I could simply exhale into your presence at the end of the day.

The world outside me has changed — unrecognizably so.

But inside me?

You are still here.

You exist in the silent spaces between my thoughts. In the way I pause before making a decision. In our son’s eyes. In the wind when I least expect it. In music. In memories. In me.

Some bonds are unbreakable.

They are like a river that cuts through stone — even if the river dries up or changes course, the mark it leaves never fades.

And sometimes, miraculously, something new grows from that mark.

Something fragile.

Something fierce.

Something alive.

Grief doesn’t disappear. It reshapes.

Love doesn’t die. It transforms.

And you — you’re not gone.

You’re just… everywhere I am.