loss – Daly Chronicles

7.1.26

115 months into your precious life … 115 months gone today.

This photo was taken long before many of life’s hardest chapters were written—as most childhood photos are. Looking at it now, I’m reminded that grief is rarely confined to one person or one loss. Often, on this journey, one memory opens the door to many others.

In this moment, Morgan was chillin’ with Logan and his crew. The quarter-pipe sat in our driveway, and for a while it seemed to be the center of everything. Pink hair, black hair, natural hair—it didn’t matter. Morgan wasn’t much into skateboarding, but he liked being where the action was. Like many younger brothers, he looked up to Logan and enjoyed being part of whatever was going on.

The past week has been especially difficult. The loss of someone I loved has stirred memories I wasn’t expecting. Not because grief for Morgan was hidden or dormant, but because one loss has a way of colliding with another. Faces, voices, laughter, and ordinary moments suddenly feel close again. We loved each other deeply, and that love was always real. Life simply carried us in different directions, with different paths, wants, and needs. Even so, his loss has been difficult to process. And truthfully, I’m not sure it ever fully will be.

Missing Morgan is not something reserved for difficult weeks. It is part of my everyday life. The longing for him doesn’t need a reason or a reminder—it simply exists. But this past week has reminded me how grief echoes through the years, how love leaves its mark, and how quickly memories can rise to the surface.

Looking at Morgan standing in our driveway during those summer days, I’m reminded how precious and fleeting life can be. None of us know which ordinary moments will become the memories we carry for the rest of our lives.

Today, my heart is holding many memories and many people. Morgan, always. And this week, another soul very much loved, gone too soon.

I love you.
I miss you.
You should be here.

MoM

The infamous ~ Tomorrow’s Never Promised ❤️

May 1, 2026

113 months into your precious life .. 113 months gone today.

This picture.

You’re looking straight at me—
eye to eye.

Solemn.
Steady.

My baby.

I don’t just see you.
I feel this.

Every month, going through these photos pulls me back.
Not just to you—but to you and Logan.
Pieces of a life that felt whole.
Moments I cherished that I can never step back into.

Don’t get me wrong—there are smiles. There are moments where I can sit in the memories and feel something warm, something almost light. But it’s always twofold, and more often than not, it leans the other way.

I knew at the beginning of this journey that my grief would hold strong. And it has. If anything, it’s grown stronger with time—not softer like people tend to think it should.

May 1 isn’t new to me. I’ve been here nine times before.
And still, I get stuck.

The words don’t come easily. They don’t flow off the pen. My fingers don’t move without hesitation. Everything feels caught somewhere between what I want to say and what I can actually bring myself to write.

Because how do you explain something that doesn’t settle?
How do you put structure around something that still feels this heavy?

So today, maybe this is all there is.

Not perfect words.
Not a clean message.

Just this space where I sit, remembering you, missing you, and trying—again—to say something that never feels like enough.

And yet…

I’ve been seeing you.

In that cardinal red—
showing up, saying hello with a song, making your presence known.

Just like that morning on the backyard fence,
when you said goodbye and somehow let me know you were okay.

You show up on walks with the hounds (who I still wish could meet you in person—I tell them about you), in the yard, and out and about.

Sometimes just because.
Sometimes because it’s needed.

I love you.
I miss you.
You should be here.

I am tired – Mom

April 1, 2026

112 months into your precious life .. 112 months gone today.

Today I’m just ignoring the fact that it also represents April Fool’s Day. I feel like I have no “foolishness” left—or what is left is buried deep.

I remember the school project these pictures are from—early Spring 2006. You were tasked with creating a homemade instrument, and we decided on a cigar box guitar. Gramps had the cigar box and the tools, so we pulled him in to help. We brought Trevor along too—your best friend for life. I still have that “guitar” upstairs, stowed away (I brought it out for a picture). And it still has a nice tone to it! One of those projects—like all your keepsakes—that were supposed to be handed back to you someday, maybe even passed down one day.

That day will never come.

I was just having this conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago—what will I do with all your things? All your memories? I’ve kept just about everything from the day you were born, and I still find myself holding onto anything connected to you. Time will tell…

Your game room looks just as it did 10 years ago. I finally brought your PS4 and VR up to the living room. It hadn’t been turned on in a few years and needed quite the update. It took me 10 years to move it, even though the thought came and went so many times. Doing things like this throws me down Alice’s rabbit hole, and I often get stuck there. Maybe that’s why I stopped playing in the game room—why it took me so long to move it.

The bigger part of me didn’t want to disrupt your space.
The most recent part of me thought, why not?
You can always put it back.

So now it sits on the entertainment center, covered to protect it from dust—I know how much it meant to you. I’ve used the VR twice since bringing it up here last week—Tetris. And, I might add (not sure if you’d agree, lol), I prefer my Meta Quest 3 over the PS VR. 🙂

I still can’t get into your PlayStation account. Who knows what birth date you used when you set it up—you were underage at the time. And getting back into mine? That took a minute too—and not without tears. Everything feels like a task, and somehow it all connects back to you… to this grief journey, in one way or another.

Looking back at that mop of hair—you were in a “let’s grow it out” phase. Nothing major—the brief black hair phase was yet to come. I think a lot of it had to do with Logan—you looked up to him, followed his lead. He was your big brother, after all. But wow… a head of hair. Just like Mom.

I talk to you every day. Do you hear me? Do you see me cry?

Grief.
And a decade coming up.

I love you.
I miss you.
You should be here.

Mom.

9 Years into your precious life … 9 years gone today.

108 months. 108 months without hearing your voice. 108 months without being able to hug you or kiss your forehead. 108 months of not feeling you muscle-block me in passing.

I have a book to write-someday.
But my mind is chaos. The carousel of memories spins and spins, and sometimes it stops—just long enough to drop me back into a moment, a feeling, a flash of you. Then it’s gone, swallowed by tears. By grief. By the kind of grief that is so deep it drags me under.

I cannot explain the depth. It’s darkness. It’s suffocation. My reach out just barely breaking through. And yet-somehow-something grabs my hand, pulls me back, reminds me to breathe.

It’s a repetitive thing, this rhythm of life. A cycle of ache and reprieve. Bittersweet suffering. The suffering that proves the love I have for you. It describes what cannot be broken, even by death. If I did not suffer, it would mean that I did not love. Love-the evidence of how deeply you are woven into me.

Today I decorated the Christmas tree. It should have been done sooner, but I’ve been stuck in the mindset of not moving forward.

Today I display your flags. A flag that honors the young man who stood tall in his dress blues, who carried the weight of service heavier than anyone should. A flag that remembers not just the Marine, but the son, the brother, the friend who gave pieces of himself until there was nothing left to give. And a flag that tells the world you are forever in heaven standing among warriors of light.

Nine years gone. Nine years of silence where your voice should be. Nine years of grief that never lets go.

The tree glows, the flags fly, and I sit here in ache-holding you in memory, in love, in honor-as the tears continue to drop.

You are remembered, Morgan.

Your comedic personality.
Your kindness, inspiration, and encouragement to family, friends, and strangers.
Your beautiful smile and the Herbert impression.
Your love for amphibians.
Your Gainz and dedication to self-improvement.
The nerdy side of you enthralled with Pokémon, Magic, and D&D.

And the countless other things-your smile, your voice, your strength-millions of fragments that made you whole and made you unforgettable.

I loved you then, I love you still, and I always will.

Semper Fi Morgan ~ Mom

Read Morgan’s obituary here ~