There’s this thing, that’s going on for me, for the past year. The death of my mother. Which has an empathy shelf life, and is a strange thing to talk about/address.

I had, in many ways, a really weird relationship with her – she was manic a lot of the time, in our last years together. I didn’t always comprehend her way of coping with the world, her approach. But I’ve come to understand that it’s a part of me, my experiential evolution, that I can’t change.

In advance of the anniversary of her death, seriously, I can’t emphasize more the gifts that come from losing a loved one so close.

We’re all destined to accumulate loss, as morbid and awful as that sounds. As much as it is our fate, it need not be our focus.

I’m writing this now, for all of the other misfit toys, who have experienced this kind of loss – not quite the loss of a parent, when the parent wasn’t so functional in that role. Moreso the loss of our history, in the retelling, that evaporates in that loss.

It’s a few weeks away, that anniversary for me. But as I contemplate other passings of time, this is how I’m choosing to honour it.

We fail ourselves, not being willing to discuss the aftermath of death. We lose the potential for connection, for understanding. We continue, because we have to, and because we can. But we lose the humanity, when we don’t listen. When we don’t understand because it hasn’t touched us closely enough, or because we can’t admit that it did.

It’s solstice today. The longest day of the year. I’m not entirely sure why it strikes me today. But I want you to know, no matter your loss. I get the gap. I understand the empty space. And I’m sending you love, that I know I will receive in return. It can’t make up for that absence. But maybe we can be in that void, together.

Some of you reading now will not comprehend this sentiment, because you remain unaffected. That is fortune, and you are fortunate for it. I don’t begrudge you that.

For the people who resonate with this, this experience of confounding, confusing loss, loss that could not have been, if circumstances had been different, choices had been different – I’m there with you.