There seems to be a lot of it nowadays.

I’ve said goodbye to close friends over the years; my sister asked me once how I stay so happy with life when I have been to that many funerals.

It’s a hard question to answer.

I will never forget the people I love but no longer have in my life. They feel as real and as alive as any of you. For example all of my grandparents; I frequently want to write to them, and I try to enjoy the moment of thinking about it as much as I would the action, because of course I can’t. And the friends who passed too soon and are perpetually their twenty something selves, I try not to miss them, or wish a future they will never get to have, but remember them laughing and loving life.

Then there are the friends we have disengaged with, who disappointed us and we walked away from, or who cut us out seemingly without reason. I miss them too, but it’s not the same. I do wonder, I try to reach out, to reconnect, I never get a response.

And, poignantly, but least spoken of, I know there are those of you who have lost someone when they were still growing inside of you, or shortly after their birth. It’s something I don’t expect to know myself. Something I would never wish on anyone else. The hope and knowledge of life and love, the expectation and feeling of a new creation, to lose that must be an emptiness you cannot describe.

Yet I see you, sharing your experiences, trying to help others find the words, hoping they don’t reach the same depths of pain, or just trying to provide a space for outreach and comfort.

I don’t mean to compare my losses to yours.

But please know I care.