Easter has always carried with it the soft promise of hope and a sense of renewal that arrives quietly, like the first warm breeze that cuts through cold air. The way vibrant tulips begin to pierce the frozen ground. Tender things surviving in spite of everything.

But this year, those promises felt like distant whispers. Thin and fading. Too fragile to reach me.

This was my first Easter without my daughter.

She was 27. Just 27. And already gone.

The calendar keeps turning. And while my body walks through spring, my heart stays buried in winter.

Her death forged a brutal mark in time.

Holidays before Kay died. Holidays after Kay died.

I miss her in every breath, every second.

I didn’t really know what to do on Easter Sunday. Do I set the table like always, as if muscle memory could pretend her absence away? Or do I disappear from the day entirely, let it drift past like a dream I’m not ready to dream again?

This year it was the latter. Maybe it changes each year. I don’t know yet.

But I do know that nothing about this Easter felt the same.

No phone calls this year. No visits. No church. No feast. Nothing.

Just a heart that screamed with emptiness and a quiet that pressed against the walls of the house until even the windows felt like they might shatter.

This Easter was not joyful. It wasn’t full of life. It was bare and quiet and aching.

But it was calm. And maybe that calmness is what I needed most.