Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

It has certainly been a strange week. First, some dear friends lose their infant son. Then I found out that a neighbor's husband died suddenly. My neighbor has a three year old daughter. I'm in a bit of a funk. And as I think about just how much all of these parties' lives will be changed, I think about how my mother's death changed me.

I do think that when someone in your immediate family gets snatched from you (mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister), words cannot express what you feel. The hardest thing I found about it is that your life still goes on. I felt that the world should stop, at least for a moment, to acknowledge the painful, seismic shift in my life. But cruelly and insolently, the banality of the daily grind continued. And yes, there are people who care for you who wish that you wouldn't suffer so -- but your grief is your own. And after you wrestle with the gaping void left by the passing of your dear one, you come out at the other end of it fundamentally changed. You have happy moments and adjust back into the rhythm of your life, but at least for me, and I imagine for other people, you are, at your core, a sad person. So I think about my friends and my neighbor and it makes me restless and keeps me awake in the middle of the night.