And I kept my son’s room just as it had always been — a bright, sunlit room, full of his favorite books and his red fire truck, and I put the small green velvet dinosaur back on his pillow, where it belonged, and I left his crayon drawing of the green dinosaur taped to the refrigerator, right where he had put it, where it will stay for as long as I own that fridge, which is to say, forever.

Now, in the evenings, I sit on the back porch swing with a mug of tea and watch the light come down gold through the oak trees, and I am, in a way I could not have imagined on the night of the funeral, at peace.

The peace is not the absence of grief.

I want to be clear about that, because I would not want anyone who has lost a child to read this and feel that they have failed by not reaching some sunny finish line where the pain is gone.

The pain is not gone.

It will never be gone; I have stopped waiting for it to be.