Naomi Raquel
3 min readJul 31, 2024

Milestones

This coming year is a big deal for our society — voting on our future and whether we will evolve or devolve.

It is a lot to contend with, particularly so given who I am and the work I do.

This coming year is also a big deal for my family.

This Fall my son will apply to high school and in June 2025, he will graduate from middle school.

Another milestone in my son’s life and in mine and my husband’s as his parents.

Yesterday I decided to enter all of the important dates for the school year in my calendar, including my son’s middle school graduation date.

I sent my family an email to save the graduation date and was hit in the gut by two thoughts:

1) That my father has missed it all — he died within a year of my son’s birth.

2) And that I hope my mother will be there, beaming as her first grandson receives his diploma.

It may seem morbid but ever since my father died, on the cusp of my journey as a mother, I have felt keenly aware of the fragility of life.

And despite how much I miss my father and how often I wish he had lived, I am in awe of the love between my mother and son.

My mother and son adore each other.

It is magical to witness the dynamic between the mother who gave me life and the son whose life I brought forth.

It is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

I know the one guarantee of life is that it will end but that does not make that truth any easier.

For me, raising my son, letting him go just a bit more each day, is reminiscent of the fleetingness of life itself and how we must live with loss.

Parenting is, in some ways, a set of constant goodbyes.

I think, though, that those inevitable (and sometimes welcome) goodbyes are magnified in the shadow of loss.

Each year that has passed since my father died, my son is less of the person my father knew.

In my son’s face, I see the passage of time and the chasm that continues to grow between the world my father inhabited and the world as it is now.

Sending a save the date for my son’s middle school graduation brought all of these feelings to the surface, and to an extent, surprised me.

I know I cannot linger in these feelings, but I will acknowledge them.

I live my life intimately aware of the delicate, beautiful and heartbreaking nature of being alive.

As I approach these months that will be filled with change, on a micro and macro scale, I will honor my feelings.

And I will continue to feel nothing but gratitude for each day

I — and those I love — awake to the dawn.

Photographer: Julie Wang
Naomi Raquel

Bilingual. New Yorker. Multiethnic. Change Agent. Author of “Strength of Soul” (2Leaf Press; University of Chicago Press, April 2019)