Passing

Over the past year, through losing my grandfather and coming to terms with my own mortality through the application for life insurance, I've acquired a deep empathy for loss. Whether it has been the loss suffered by a person I've never met, but care about or a person in my every day life inexplicably and unacceptably losing someone dear to suicide, my perspective now shitfs, my world turns on its axis as I feel a physical ache for their loss, for no matter how different our professional lives are or how distinct our surroundings, we are each precious.

We think, feel and hurt differently, but oh so equally when it comes right down to it. When I read that Martha Stewart's mother, Big Martha, had passed away, I didn't think of her fame or her money. I thought that it's the holidays, and now more than any other time of year we turn to our families. I thought how bitterly unfair.

While my girls sleep cuddled beneath fleecey Princess and Dora blankets, I am thinking of how lucky I am to have them and how sorry I am for those dear people who are right now, aching for the absence of someone they love.