On Mother's Day, 2011.

So your mother died when you were 19, and sometimes maybe it seems like people expect you to have gotten over it, already. Which blows your mind, because you never expect anyone to just get over losing anything they loved, not even a goldfish, not even a job, not even a plastic hair thingy. Love is love. Loss is loss. You don't get used to any of it.

Sometimes your father seems impatient that you haven't gotten over it. And that is particularly astounding, because he is further away from getting over anything than anyone you have ever met, or heard of even, ever.

Sometimes your friends lose things they love and you fall all over yourself trying to tell them it's okay to never get over it, that even if the rest of the world lobs deadlines at them like grenades, you want to be a path for them in which it's always okay to walk wounded. You mean, with a yearning to help them that hurts up to your collarbone, to give them the space you learned to need. But. This is not what anyone wants to hear right after they lose something they love. In the bleeding, stinging abyss of their loss, they ask you: When does it get better? They want to hear: Soon; or, A little better every day; or, Be strong, time heals all. And the words rise to your lips: I don't know, yet.

You don't lie about this. Lying would be exactly what you don't want to do, about this.

And they think you are talking about your mom, how you still miss her every day. They are right, in part. She was the first thing you loved, after all. Everyone is born trying to hold on to what they love. What they don't know is that you knew from the beginning that every day we are failing and failing and failing. Losing is the one given. Love isn't.