These thoughts come, and like the log on the fire, they don’t go. My boy, my sweet Evan, the easy middle child, walking like he owned the world. A smile pulled clear across my face as I waited for his eyes to turn and see me at the door.

And they did turn. And they did see.

And then they widened and looked away. He grew closer, and still, they did not return to me. He positioned himself between two of his friends and passed through the door, leaving me in awe of his dismissiveness.

It is just now, one hundred and eleven miles later, that I feel the bite of it.

My vision blurs. I wipe away tears. Christ, I hear John. Stop being so Molly! He’s a teenager.

But the thought won’t leave, this image of his back turned as he walked into the building.

I look up at the dark clouds stirring in the sky and see the sign for the Gas n’ Go sitting atop a giant pole. The storm is a hurricane. I am driving right into its path.

John said this was another reason I shouldn’t make the trip today. The school could cancel the game if the storm got too close, and even if they didn’t, I would surely run into it on the way home.

The storm, Evan not caring.

And Annie. He stopped short of saying it, but the words lingered between us.

Today is the anniversary of her death. Five years ago, on this day, we lost our youngest child. She was nine years old.

No. I will not think of Annie. I will not go backward. I will go forward.

Put one foot in front of the other.

I learned this in grief counseling. I used to be a middle school science teacher, where the focus is on learning to analyze problems by breaking them down into pieces and forming hypotheses—so I studied the grief this way. Objectively. Clinically. We are not wired to witness the death of a child. To endure it. To survive it. But like every other human defect, we have used science to outsmart our own biology. We can take a brain that is shredded ear to ear and we can put it back together with mantras like this one. Mantras that have been tested in clinical trials. Vetted in peer articles and TED Talks and now appear in self-help books.

You just put one foot in front of the other, Molly. Every day, just one more step.

Had I not had other children to care for, I would not have been able to take these steps. I would have died. Let myself die. Found a way to die. The pain was not survivable. And yet I survived.

Forward.

But the day continues to unravel, back now, to the morning.