Visiting 2020…

I have been back to Rosemary Beach many times since 2020. That is important to say, because this isn't a story about returning for the first time and suddenly being overwhelmed by memories. I have walked these streets again. I have sat on this beach again. I have ridden these bike paths again. I have eaten at the restaurants, watched the sunsets and made new memories here. And yet, every single time I come back, some part of me gets stuck in 2020.

The last vacation we took here before Lilly died was June 2020. At the time, there was nothing particularly significant about it. It was simply our family on vacation. We went to the beach. We rode bikes. We laughed. We probably got irritated with each other. We did all the completely ordinary things families do when they assume there will be another summer.

A few weeks later, Lilly was gone.

Now when I come back, I don't just remember her. For brief moments, I feel like I am living alongside the past.

I can be riding my bike today, but somewhere in my mind I am riding beside Lilly in 2020. I can look at the beach and see the people who are actually there, but I can also see my family as we were then. Sometimes the memory is so vivid that six years seems impossible.

How can six years have passed when part of me is still standing right there?

I used to think this meant I wasn't healing properly.

Surely after enough time, enough therapy, enough prayer, enough conversations and enough trips back here, this place should stop having such power over me.

It hasn't.

What has changed is that I no longer believe it needs to. I have learned that grief doesn't follow the calendar. The world measures loss in years. The heart measures it in moments. A smell. A song. A photograph. A bike ride. A certain stretch of beach. Suddenly there is no distance between then and now.

You are there.

That doesn't mean you have gone backwards. It doesn't erase all the healing you've done between then and now. It simply means that love has a memory.

That may be one of the most important things I can tell someone who is grieving: Stop grading yourself on how well you are grieving. There is no finish line.

You don't receive a prize for crying less. You haven't failed because something brings you to your knees five or ten or twenty years later. You don't have to stop talking about the person you lost because everyone else has become more comfortable talking about other things. And you don't have to "move on."

You learn to move forward while carrying someone who can no longer walk beside you. That is very different. I have also learned that grief contains questions that may never have answers.

Mine has one that follows me everywhere.

What if?

Lilly struggled, and I waited for her to take the step toward rehab herself. I wanted her to choose it. I wanted her to be ready. If I could go back, I wouldn't wait. I would put her in the car and drive her straight there.

Would it have saved her? I don't know. That is the sentence I have had to learn to live with. I don't know.

Maybe she would be here today. Maybe everything would have turned out differently. Maybe it wouldn't have changed the ending at all.

For years, grief convinced me that if I replayed the past enough times, eventually I would find the exact moment where I could have changed the future. That is one of grief's cruelest tricks.

It gives us information today that we did not have then and asks us to judge yesterday's decisions with it. I wish I had done some things differently. I will always wish that. Healing has not erased my regret. What healing is slowly teaching me is that regret and responsibility are not always the same thing.

For anyone carrying their own "what if," I want you to hear that.

You can wish you had known more without punishing yourself forever for not knowing it. You can wish you had acted differently and still have compassion for the person you were at the time. And sometimes the only thing we can do with regret is turn it into wisdom for someone else.

So if someone you love is struggling, don't assume you have unlimited time. Ask the uncomfortable question. Make the phone call. Offer the ride. Sit beside them. Help them find professional help. Risk having them angry with you. You cannot control another person's choices or guarantee an outcome, but you can make sure they don't have to find the road to help alone. That is one way I can make something meaningful out of one of the most painful questions of my life.

There is another lesson Rosemary Beach keeps teaching me. Don't wait until a moment becomes a memory to understand its value. I would give almost anything for one completely ordinary day with Lilly.

Not a birthday. Not Christmas. Not some beautiful family vacation. Just a Saturday.

I would take her complaining. I would take an argument. I would take her asking me for something at the worst possible time. I would take a messy kitchen, everyone talking over each other and nobody appreciating the fact that we were all together.

Because I know something now that I didn't know then.

Those were the moments.

We spend so much of our lives waiting for the big things while the life we will someday miss is happening quietly around us.

So take the picture.

Answer the call.

Stay at dinner a little longer.

Say I love you first.

Forgive something that really isn't worth carrying.

And every once in a while, when the people you love are together, stop whatever you are doing and look around.

Memorize the ordinary.

One day you may discover that it was extraordinary.

I also want people who love someone who is grieving to understand something: you don't have to fix us.

You can’t. You don't need the perfect words. You don't need to remind us to be grateful for what we still have. You don't need to tell us that the person we lost would want us to be happy.

Sometimes the greatest gift you can give a grieving person is simply the willingness to remember with them. Say their person's name. Ask about them.

Listen to the same story again. Don't be afraid that mentioning them will remind us that they died. We haven't forgotten. What we are sometimes afraid of is that everyone else will.

Lilly.

I still say her name.

I still tell her stories.

I still wonder who she would be today.

And yes, I still get stuck in 2020.

But maybe "stuck" isn't quite the right word anymore.

Maybe I visit.

Rosemary Beach is one of the places where the distance between my life now and my life then becomes very small. For a little while, I visit the mother I was before I knew what was coming. I visit my family exactly as we were. I visit Lilly on the beach and on those bike rides.

And then I come back.

That is the difference six years has made. I can go there without staying there. I can miss Lilly desperately and still love the life happening around me. I can laugh without betraying her. I can make new memories in the same place that holds some of my most painful ones.

Healing didn't mean leaving Lilly in 2020. It meant learning how to bring her with me into 2026.

So when I come back to Rosemary Beach and suddenly find myself in June 2020 again, I don't fight it quite as hard anymore. I let myself remember. I let myself hurt. I let myself wonder. I let myself love her.

And then I look at the people who are here with me now.

I try to really see them. Because perhaps that is the most meaningful thing grief has taught me: the past deserves to be remembered, but the people standing in front of us deserve to be noticed.

I cannot change June 2020. I cannot drive Lilly to rehab. I cannot create the ending I desperately wish our family had been given. But I can decide what I do with the love that remains. I can speak her name. I can share what I have learned. I can reach toward another mother carrying an impossible "what if" and tell her she doesn't have to solve the past in order to keep living.

I can encourage someone to make that phone call today instead of tomorrow. I can love the people who are still here more intentionally. And I can keep coming back to Rosemary Beach.

Sometimes I'll be in 2026. Sometimes, for a little while, I'll be in 2020.

And maybe healing is not choosing between the two.

Maybe healing is learning how to stand in the present, hold the hand of the person you used to be, carry the person you lost—and keep walking.