The Swing Still Moves

We never took the swing down.

Even after three years, it still hangs quietly in the backyard, suspended between the thick arms of our old maple tree. Its ropes are faded now, the seat sun-bleached and cracking at the edges, but somehow it keeps holding on — just like us. It creaks in the breeze some mornings, as if moved not by wind but by memory.

Every Saturday, I sit by the kitchen window, coffee growing cold in my hands, watching it sway. There’s something hauntingly faithful about it. Like it’s still waiting for her. Like it believes she’s just running late.

Sometimes, I almost believe it too.

She loved that swing. Said it made her feel like she could fly without ever leaving the ground. And honestly, that was Lily in every way — wild, fearless, full of light. A little sunbeam in sneakers.

She was the kind of child who turned mud into cake batter, who collected rocks and insisted they had names. She danced without music. Spoke to trees. She once brought a dying butterfly inside and asked if we could "whisper it back to life."

Everything with Lily was magical, even the messes. Our house pulsed with her: glitter in the carpet, mismatched socks in every drawer, stories taped to the walls. She filled rooms with the kind of laughter that made you forget time.

Until, suddenly, she didn’t.

It was August. One of those late-summer evenings where the sky turns pink too slowly and the air feels thick with waiting.

She didn’t come in for dinner.

At first, we thought she was playing hide-and-seek. Her favorite game. I called her name — once, twice, louder each time. My voice cracked before I did. Then came the search. My husband ran toward the fence line; I checked the swing, the garden, under the porch.

She had climbed the old apple tree. Too high. Too fast.

They said it was quick. That she didn’t feel it. I try to believe them.

Grief isn’t just sadness. It’s forgetting how to breathe in a house that still smells like her shampoo. It’s setting out three plates for dinner without realizing. It’s hearing a laugh at the store that sounds just like hers — and turning around before your heart remembers she’s gone.

People stopped visiting after the first year. Their words dried up. “She was so special.” “You’re so strong.” “Time heals.”

No one tells you that grief is messy. That healing isn’t linear. That some mornings you wake up feeling normal — and by noon, you’re crying into the laundry because you found her favorite shirt.

We thought about taking the swing down.He stood under the tree with a saw in one hand, silent. “I can’t do it,” he finally said, his voice catching in the warm summer air.

“Good,” I whispered.

Because the swing isn’t just a swing. It’s a monument. A memory that still moves. A heartbeat held up by two stubborn ropes.

Now, we let it stay. We let it sing when the wind passes through, like it’s telling us she’s still nearby — just invisible, just out of reach.

Sometimes I sit beneath it. I close my eyes and lean my head against the tree. And in the rustle of the leaves, in the groan of the rope, I swear I hear her.

Laughing.

Still flying.

We never took the swing down.

And maybe we never will.

Because some echoes never fade.

Some swings never stop.

And some children, no matter how briefly they stay, leave behind a world forever changed.

By Ummekhani...

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