Heavy Heart

Like many things we think of when we are young, I think my view toward having someone in your life pass away was very simple: that it only affects you as much as you were close to that person. As an adult, what I’ve experienced is so much more complicated than that - and so much less self-centered. Along with your memories of that person, you carry around that person’s loved ones and what they are going through - spouses, children, brothers, sisters, grandchildren. Even if you never knew the person you still carry these connections around with you, as I’m doing for a co-worker who just lost her dad.

It’s hard when these things seem to happen one-after-another and you carry around multiple people in your heart going through perhaps the hardest part of life. The fact that I feel deeply for loved ones or friends going through it only confirms for me how much we are all connected to one-another in a very primal way. I continue to feel this more strongly, and steadily, as I grow older, and for that I am thankful.

I never in my wildest dreams thought this love and caring could seep through computers as it has for E. and J. during this difficult time with their uncle, and that only further confirms that empathy, love and caring exist even when we’ve never seen each other’s face. In a time when death seems to be at many doors right now, that is what keeps me going.