We will all one day lose someone so close to our hearts, that when they are suddenly gone, it feels like part of us is gone now too. When that unique part of us that only that friend knew suddenly vanishes, it aches–like I imagine what losing a limb might feel like, but because no one can see you’re missing a limb, everyone treats you the same–since the part that’s missing is in your heart.

Three years ago I was scrolling through Facebook, like I normally do before bed, on a beautiful and otherwise uneventful August night. It was an otherwise regular night of watching tv after a regular day at the beach. Until all of a sudden, I sat and stared in complete and utter shock at the post on my cell phone screen that my dear friend was no longer with us. My friend was really and unbelievably gone.

I never found out how it happened. I was not able to attend the service. I could not bring myself to go because I was that devastated, and not so close to her family and I had to work because I needed the money anyway. But I can tell you honestly, I have not been the same since. I know everyone who knew her feels that same way. That’s because we aren’t. We are less whole than we were in some ways. That’s because she was the kind of person who made chicken pot-pie from scratch. Who knew sign-language she learned to be able to interpret for the deaf and ended up falling in love with working with adults with down syndrome. She knew all the lyrics to every Indigo Girls song, met and had her picture taken with James Taylor, and had a major school-girl crush on Johnny Depp, before he got all creepy. Who I once belly laughed all afternoon long with in a strawberry field as her pre-teen daughter picked strawberries to make strawberry short-cake with and strawberry rhubarb pie too. All day her sweet and innocent daughter looked and laughed on as we cracked each other up, and belted out Pink songs with the windows rolled manually down, in her little goop green hyandai. This woman taught me by example how to be confident in the work I did with adults with autism, especially when the s#!”% was hitting the fan. She taught me to stand firm and remain calm and use my most commanding voice to calm a 6 foot 3, 280 pound man whose body was contorting like it was inhabited by a terrified and terrifying octopus.

When you lose someone who only has a small trailer yet takes you in after a break-up from your first real heart-break and nurses you back to yourself with plenty of Ben & Jerry’s New York
Super Fudge Chunk, late night kahlua-intoxicated-girl-talk about life and love and the universe… you just can never turn back because you will never be the same. The question I ask all of you is, would we really want to be? What is the point to only live life without all of this amazing letting eachother in? I know I for one don’t want to one little aiota-bit! Isn’t risking getting that close to people what it’s all about? Life before texting, facebooking, and social media where we talked into the night, under the same roof and looked out at the same damn window at the same damn stars. I think that after sharing real moments like that, it is okay not to be the same when your friend dies. No one would expect you to be the same if you lost a different part of you, and it is the same when it comes to the heart. The heart is resilient, but loss is loss. Living with it and despite it and kicking ass and taking names after you broke it, should earn admiration– like re-learning to walk again after a stroke, or relearning to use a shoulder after a surgery. Living means losing people you love, but it does not have to be something we do in silence. In fact, I think we should talk about love and death a lot more than we do. I think maybe we would all feel a lot better if we did. I know I do. Thank you all for listening. And don’t be afraid to keep using that heart of yours–even if it just keeps getting broken. We got to live on and love on, and keep cheering each other on.