Nothing is the same

Tonight I was once again reminded how our family has changed. Your brother will turn 14 on Tuesday, but we took him out for his birthday dinner tonight. You should have been with us. You should have been there laughing and sharing stories of him as a baby. You should have been there commenting about it being hard to believe that your baby brother was now taller then you. You should have been, but you were not there. Our family changed so quickly. I missed you tonight and thought about how we would have had a boys vs girls thing at some point. Sometimes I don't think people understand that these are the moments that hurt so badly. They don't understand that we cannot just "move on." Now someone is always missing from our holidays, our celebrations, our tragedies and our triumphs. You are always missing. Moments that should be happy are never as happy as they once were. Our life is tainted now. The holidays are coming up and it is hard not to fall into depression. It is a fight just to go on some days. We have to. People don't understand why I can't move on. It has been 16 months, 2 weeks and 1 day so why haven't I moved on? I can't. This was my daughter who was murdered. This goes against the natural order of life. I go first, not her. She didn't have to die. She could have been saved, but someone took it upon himself to decide that she wouldn't be. Someone decided to change my life forever and to throw me onto a roller coaster that I want to get off of. Everything that I believed before is now something that I question. Things that I thought were important before don't seem that way anymore. I would trade it all just to have her back again. Just to hear her voice once more. I'd give anything for that, but everything's changed and we can't go back.