You visit my dreams every now and then.

You see me as I am now, and I find myself more careful—kinder—around you. In the back of my mind, I know you’re gone, so I use that time to say the things I never could. I tell you how much I missed you, how much I’ve grown, and all the words I kept to myself after you left.

When I wake up, the sadness lingers. It’s that same lump-in-the-throat feeling that follows a burial. You return to a house that’s quiet and hollow, where everything still smells like them, but you know, deep down, it’s the last time it ever will.

When you left, I was just a kid. I couldn’t wrap my head around the sickness you carried or the pain you were going through. I was caught up in my own little selfish world. I was twelve, and I had no idea how wide a space grief would take up in our lives in the years that followed.

Sometimes I ache, knowing you only knew me as that child who thought mostly of herself. You never got to see the slow becoming—the way I’ve learned to think beyond myself, to give more than I take, to carry a heart that serves others. You didn’t get to see the growth… and that thought used to break me.

But now, what holds me together is hope.

Hope in God’s promise. That one day He will wipe away every tear. That death and sorrow and pain will be no more. That I’ll see you again. Not in a dream, but in the fullness of eternity.

And maybe you only knew me for twelve years.

But we’ve got forever to catch up, Ate Kirsty.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

– Revelations 21:4 (KJV)