Announcement

 
Every morning, I read the #StuffMyGirlSays quotes that show up in my Facebook memories. Some still make me laugh. Some stop me cold.

On the first anniversary of Jess’s death, it was this one.

“I’m sorry you are going to die shorter. I’m living lots longer, but you are bigger.”

She was only three when she said it. I remember laughing because it was adorable, and because she had that serious little voice, trying to sort out life, size, and time. Bigger meant older. Older meant I’d go first. It made perfect sense to her.

Reading it now is something else entirely. What she said so innocently turned out to be the opposite of what happened. It shocks me every time I stumble onto one like this. What should have been jumps right off the page, bright and simple and full of life, and I have to face again that it is not how the story went. Her words stayed, but she didn’t. That is the part that never gets easier.

Around that time, I had an idea.

For a year, I had been sharing the Facebook Jess posts over on Careful as a Moondrop. I started it so friends and family who are not on Facebook could still see them. Nearly 400 posts later, it felt right to let Careful as a Moondrop stand as a one-year snapshot, a record of that first wild, painful, beautiful year of missing her.

And then I did what I always do when something needs a real ending.

I just stopped posting over there altogether.

I kept posting on Facebook, a lot less than before, to be fair, but I did not keep up with Careful as a Moondrop. Wrapping it up at the one-year mark felt weirdly final, and I was already dealing with enough final things. So instead of choosing an ending, I just stopped.

But lately I have been thinking about the people who are not on Facebook. The reason I started Careful as a Moondrop in the first place was to make sure the Jess posts could still be seen, even if you were not in that specific corner of the internet.

So I am going back in.

Over the next little bit, I am going to add the Jess posts from Facebook that never made it over to Careful as a Moondrop, from where I stopped up until now. I want that record to be complete, not as a perfect archive, just as a clear thread of remembering.

Once the posts are caught up, I will write a final post to end 2025 and officially conclude Careful as a Moondrop. (But do not worry, something new is coming.)

I tend to avoid endings because they feel sharp. But unfinished things linger.

I want to close this with intention, and with gratitude.

If you have read along, shared, or quietly witnessed, thank you. It has mattered.