neverforget – Daly Chronicles

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.

3.1.26 111 months since March changed us forever…

Once again, I wasn’t able to find photos for this month’s post. For years, I believed entire stretches of pictures had been lost, so I learned to improvise. When I came across the long-missing box of developed photos tucked away in the basement last year — untouched since we moved into this home nearly 17 years ago — I thought I had finally recovered all those missing years. But as I move through them month by month, it has become clear that January 2006 is still MIA. The month that marks 111 months simply doesn’t exist in photographs (which I find hard to believe), or it’s hiding in some other very secretive place, waiting to surprise me at the least expected moment.

So instead, I return to the moments I do have — the days of March 2015, just before everything changed.

Every part of the year — every month, every day — feels like the rebirth of unfolding events. I think that is why the first is so prominent to me. Many see it as a new beginning, a turning of the page, or the simplicity of a refresh.

The first, to me, is none of those. It is a cycle of replaying unfolding events in my mind. Date by date. Milestone by milestone. Worry by worry. Interwoven with the good and everyday aspects of the life I’ve come to know.

And then there is March — the month that carries its own weight. None of us knew what this journey would bring. And as a mom, of course I didn’t want to see you go, but I supported your dream one hundred percent.

The weekend before you left for boot, you had the guys over to make your final D.I.P. video. You played cards, laughed, and were the same goofy, fun-loving kid everyone knew you to be. None of us could have imagined how profoundly those first steps onto the infamous yellow footprints would change the future — for you, and for all of us.

The weekend you left, we all went to Red Lobster for a going-away, good-luck dinner together.

The following morning, we drove you to the Green Bay recruiting office — where hugs were given and goodbyes and I love yous were shared. The Morgan we knew left with you that day, never to return the same.

I remember a talk we had once, after you were finally home — after you had experienced the things that broke you. You told me you wished that I had stopped you that day — that I had told you not to go. At the time, I wanted to say those words, but only for my own sake. I didn’t want to watch you leave. Not knowing what was to come, I don’t believe you would have listened, and who was I to try to sway your dream? You didn’t share much more after that.

Hindsight… if only.

So, you see, it isn’t only the firsts, but March as well. March marks the beginning of the time frame in which the unraveling unfolds — and where I slowly come to understand the limits of what love, distance, and hope could reach.

Writing these posts are never easy. Memories hurt — even the good ones. Every first of the month pulls me back in time. I carry a quiet expectation of perfection, even though this story has never been neat or finished. Someday, a book may hold the pieces in a way that feels complete. For now, I’ll let the moments I do have speak for themselves.

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

Morgan J. ~ PFC Daly USMC

February 1, 2026

110 months into your precious life… 110 months gone today…

Today. December 2005. This is where I am.
I chose a couple of Christmas photos to share.

Looking through these memories takes me back to when you were introduced to Tim Burton films. The Nightmare Before Christmas — the coffin-shaped DVD box set you were gifted from Santa — and Corpse Bride were among your favorites. I still have your Jack Skellington blanket, and I think the beanie is stashed away somewhere… or Logan may have confiscated it. My memory isn’t always the greatest. Someday it will resurface like a small, unexpected gift, right when I need it most.

It’s strange how memory picks and chooses when to show up — when to offer details freely, and when to interrupt with the realization that you had completely forgotten about that.

Things continue to change. I know it’s inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

John and Miriam have moved, and soon a new neighbor will take over the space we all came to know so well. Things I’ll never forget: the SunDrop video you made with your friends — newly formed at the time as Drop It Productions (D.I.P.) — knocking on their door, John opening it, clearly wondering what on earth was happening, and you all “dropping it like it’s hot” right there in the middle of his driveway, in front of him. I still wonder what must have been going through his mind.

Then fast forward to the first day John saw you in your dress blues while you were home on leave after graduation. A young Marine shaking hands with a veteran — also a Marine. A moment frozen in time that I was able to capture on camera.

We shared sixteen years as neighbors. Almost ten of those years were held with your absence — and memories were all we had left to share.

Since you’ve been gone, change hasn’t come all at once — it’s arrived in waves, some quiet, some impossible to ignore. It isn’t just people moving on or time marching forward — it’s the steady disappearance of the life that once surrounded you. Neighbors, routines, places, even the small constants that anchored those years have slowly slipped away. Hazel is the only pet left now from your time here, and even the big brown couch — the one that held so many ordinary moments — will soon fade away too. That reality carries more weight than it should.

Each loss is small on its own, but together they make the absence louder. And that’s the part that breaks my heart — all the pieces quietly disappearing from you.

I have to remind myself that no matter what changes, your moments will always remain whole.

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 ~