Driving down the Jersey Turnpike on Tuesday, with the kids asleep in the back seat, and I'm suddenly launched back in time over a year to the previous July.
The moment was when I stood under a large oak tree with Zach in the evening light, in his tractor pj bottoms at the NJ Turnpike's Molly Pitcher rest stop - along this same route. I had to tell him why we were making this trip south after just having flown down and back 2 days earlier, not sure he even knows what "death" means. Understanding that the only memory he would have of his Aunt Jenni will have been caught in the lens of his 3-year-old perception. Telling him that she was about to die - we knew this for sure - but that she wasn't yet departed.
Then the moment passes, I'm back in the car driving south for Thanksgiving, for the first time in 3 years. I ask Josh if he ever gets these sorts of flashbacks, he says yes, but we don't talk more about it. My eyes sting but I try not to wipe them.
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