The Day Hope Began to Slip

There are dates that become etched into the rhythm of memory — not marked on a calendar, but felt in the body. Today is one of those days. It arrives quietly, but with weight, like a shadow settling across the afternoon light. This date last year was the beginning of something I didn’t yet understand, a door we stepped through without knowing what waited on the other side.

It was on this date last year that Vic was admitted to the hospital, preparing for his bone marrow transplant. Who could have imagined that just seven months later, he would be gone for good?

Sometimes I wonder — was I too naïve, too blinded by hope — to believe that Vic would be okay after the surgery? I’d seen children at my school survive leukemia, recover, and return to life with radiant smiles. I truly thought he would be one of them.

Maybe I took his health for granted. Maybe I was too focused on the practical things and not enough on the gentle ones — the kindness, the patience, the words I should have said. Now it’s too late. Too late to say what I needed to say, too late to mend what was broken.

At least I had the chance to tell him that I never hated him. I hope he heard me that day in the hospital. I wish I’d also told him how much I missed him during those years apart, but pride got in the way — his and mine. We never got to tell each other how much we still meant to one another.

Looking back now, I see how much of our conflict was rooted in his mother’s interference — the small words, the constant meddling that slowly eroded the peace between us. It hurts to admit it, but I’ve chosen to distance myself from his family now. I only stay in touch with a few of his cousins so that Kenzo can still see his cousins — so that some part of that family connection, the good part, remains.

Grief has a way of reshaping truths we once accepted, softening the sharp edges and clarifying the quiet ones. I can’t change what happened, or what we didn’t say, but I can hold onto the love that still lives in the spaces between those memories. And on days like today — when the past feels close and the ache settles in my chest — I remind myself that what we shared, even with its imperfections, was real. It mattered. And it still does.