Those moments when the heart seizes and the pain is physical: yesterday, marinating chicken breasts, realizing that every week, I cooked a large meal or two because Wayson would come to share it. Now I have to cook for myself or find another hungry single non-cooking friend.

Anna just sent this photograph. It’s her birthday today, Eli is home from school, and we’re meeting for lunch. Usually, I’d forward this immediately to my friend and he’d write back some rhapsodic lines about family and love and youth, about the boys as heartbreakers. Not today.

So – the heart hurts and then gradually not so much. As Theresa said, now I will come to know my friend in a different way.

Friend Gretchen just emailed, “Your blog continues to shine a light Into a completely unfamiliar world. The saying ‘there are no words to express’ or ‘words fail to express,’ simply are not true to me anymore. Because I am taking notice of very powerful and deeply meaningful words to express all sorts of loss, grief, sadness, rage, as well as joy, love, appreciation, delight, memory. Your community of writers, journalists, biographers, photo journalists (writers from the eye), are all becoming an essential tank of oxygen for humanity. Every person has a story, a narrative that rolls along, from birth to death. Keep writing. It does help to heal for the reader as well.”

It is raining again. It has been raining for the last six months. One day it will stop raining.