The Calendar Doesn’t Forget

Easter again.

It’s strange how a date that moves can still feel so exact.

Two years ago, this weekend, I was walking the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk with Mark. Bush, water, long stretches of quiet. The kind of quiet that feels like it’s doing something good for you.

Kahlia was at home with Zac.
She’d talked about going camping with friends, but it didn’t end up happening. I think she just stayed home. Didn’t do much.

And I didn’t think anything of it.

It was only a few weeks later that she died.

That’s the part that sits differently now.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just… there.

A quiet, heavy knowing that I didn’t spend that Easter with her.

The year before, we went to an Easter market.
Candles, crystals, little bits of everything. We didn’t need anything, but we touched everything anyway. Picked things up, laughed, wandered slowly.

There were other Easters too.

Easter egg hunts.
Little letters from the Easter Bunny.
Chocolate hidden badly on purpose so it could be found.
That kind of soft, ordinary magic you don’t realise is sacred at the time.

After she died, I found one of the Easter eggs I’d given her.

Still in the cupboard.

Untouched.

I threw it out.

I don’t even remember deciding to. I just couldn’t hold it.
It felt like proof of something I didn’t want to understand.

This is the part no one really explains.

How the brain holds time.

It doesn’t just remember dates, it remembers feeling states.
Seasons. Light. Smells. The way a holiday feels in your body.

So when something like Easter comes around again, your brain doesn’t gently remind you.

It pulls you back.

Not all the way, not like a memory you choose, but enough. Enough that your body tightens before your mind catches up. Enough that something feels off and you don’t know why, until you do.

It’s not you being dramatic.

It’s your nervous system recognising a pattern.
It’s memory without permission.

And then there’s the missing.

I miss her every day.

But days like this… it sharpens.

It’s like the absence gets edges again.

More defined.
More specific.

Like my brain is saying, she should be here for this part.

So here’s the truth I’ve landed in, not because it’s neat, but because it’s honest.

You don’t have to do these days “right”.

You don’t have to honour them in a way that looks meaningful to anyone else.
You don’t have to be strong.
You don’t have to make it a tribute.

You just have to get through it in the way your body can tolerate.

For me, this year, it looks like watching an Easter movie.

Not because I’m okay.
Not because I’ve moved on.
But because it lets me sit close to those old moments.

It lets me pretend, just a little, that time folds.
That somewhere, somehow, she still exists in a version of this day.

And if I’m honest, it also lets me hold onto something else.

The hope that I will see her again.

I don’t need to prove it.
I don’t need it to make sense.

I just need it to exist.