Sometimes there is a tragedy just so wildly unthinkable that it puts everything to the test; every tenet, every spiritual idea. A loss of life so young, and utterly senseless and unthinkable. Life plans cast away in a moment, forever. Grief beyond understanding. Haunted dreams, and waking up in a deeper nightmare to find it is real; the one you love is gone. The look in an animal’s eye of not understanding why that person is no longer sharing your life, but the animal’s feeling every bit of the despair in the air. The tortured thoughts of “If only we had waited a moment longer,” or a million little twists that, if followed, would have avoided the fate. The memories, the visual and the sounds of the moment, seared into your mind, burned across the walls of your skull. The idea that, someday faraway from now, you might just be able to talk about it; you just might be able to make sense of it. And even that is someday faraway. And here it is only days. Torment is not a big enough word. … These are the moments when all advice is too small and useless. These are the times when well-meaning people hide because what has happened to you is so alarming and unsettling they must look away from the accident for fear the unthinkable should ever happen to them. There might be a word or two, then quiet. There might be a news story and outpouring, then quiet. Life immediately moves forward and forgets, while your life is in pieces, smashed about forever in both directions, time immemorial, time out of mind. There are no words for you. Except, I’m sorry. I am so so sorry. I don’t even know you, but if I could take it back, I would. If I could have been there to redirect the moment in some way, I would have prayed to have been there. Know you are loved, even by strangers. Know this unreasonable, nonsensical tragedy will unveil some form of reason and sense to you someday. Know your path was meant to be something different than the hundreds of others lucky to find the person, and have the wedding registry, the three of you so charming – ah, the smile of your dog looking up at both of you adoringly! – and to have that life that was planned. You will love again. You are love. You are surrounded by it, and will be for the rest of your life, in so many different forms. You will have an empathy for others. One that is different in some very real way from the empathy of others in the crowd. You will not mourn with others for the sake of mourning and perpetuating sadness and agitation as so many do in an endless sea of down-pulling negativity. That one who is always there to grieve. No, that won’t be you. You will comfort from a place of deep shared intimacy with those in such pain, quietly so. Their eyes will look to you in a certain way that expresses they *know* you understand in a way others don’t, even if the circumstance is so different. They will look to you, rightly so, as a kind of angel. In a world where others look for the joke in a tragedy summoned upon strangers, and offer surface words of kindness that are surface deep, in you will be a bottomless well of mystic water and mist. You will know life is always on the very edge of death. Always. You will inhabit that knowledge, and see the shared illusion among the rest of us that dismisses that truth – that thing that then makes it okay to insult others, to rage against others, to hurt others, all in the name of our self-righteousness. You will go deeper into a spiritual place – whether you call it spiritual or not, where those in the material will laugh at such things. The material is all that is real, you will hear … yet, sooner or later, the material always goes away, doesn’t it. You thought you were getting one life; that one most women and men seek of the perfect life. Only to find you have gotten a completely other one. You’ve been chosen to live a special one. One where the pain is so deep you feel as if you are being carved out from the insides like a jack-o’-lantern. But in that pain of your life there will be an unmistakable sublimeness. A richness. You have been blessed to have been picked to live the deepest kind of life. A life truly lived. So many don’t get this part to play. You may think it’s the part you never would ask for in a million years, and point well taken. But, at the end of it, which is far off, you will have a wealth of seeing and sight and wisdom and compassion that is so above the fray of superficial thoughts and wishes and jokes, and that of the material. All that hollowing out in you was for a purpose. So, you could be filled with riches that most don’t enjoy. There will be far greater pain as you have found, but you will have moments of far greater joy; ones hard to pinpoint at times in the early goin, but there will be these magic moments for you ahead that catch even you by surprise. Every one … every moth that dances to the flame, almost joyously, to immolate … every squirrel, every bird, every person, every building … all of it will be gone, some sooner, some a bit later, but all of us will leave the space … but what’s happening in you now, this carving out to create an experience that will end up being the richest life for you, all this part of things is forever. It has a deep eternalness to it. Your heart breaks under it, but wait because something will happen when you’ve just passed the point where you feel you can’t face another day. Something will happen, outside of you, or a feeling inside. And, you’ll find you’ve never lost that person, that being. In a very real way, you are there with your love all the time. And, you will even have that joy again; that registry, that wedding, that sharing, that form of family. But, you will have grown through so many layers there will be a richness that so many can’t even miss or long for because they can’t even dream the colors of such consciousness and awareness in their current state of being. Please just remember to breathe today. All these thoughts can be put away, and pulled out someday if ever desired. Please just know you are loved, and being carried through these days where you can hardly move without tears. One door out might be in doing something utterly radical; in loving as hard as you can, even the one who committed the act of horror. That idea makes you wince to your core, but if you can be as radical in love as you can, you might find a shot of love and light into your hell that has a power that can only be described as divine in its nature and strength and grace in lifting you. But, if that is not for today, or for any other day, that is fine. Today just know you are loved. We will all be gone, all of us, soon enough. But, this hell, this pain, this carving out in you … only you will know the message and reward of it at the end of the story, because only you were chosen among so many as ready for its message. Only you will get to see over mountaintops many of us are straining on tippy toes to see. You will only lose, and doors will close forever to you, when you say, “It was all meaningless,” and delve into the abyss. Allow some of that if it must be, but keep your head up – literally so, even – and let grace have its way with you during this time. You might even feel little moments of a burst in the midst of the darkness. One will be me. Others will be of countless other souls. It will all be of the same love and connectedness. You are safe. There is nothing to fear. You are loved. You are love itself at your core. Everyone you have ever loved, and ever will love, is around you now, holding you and embracing you. You will feel them. Love will always be your touchstone, your tool, your mark, your way out, your safety place, your light working. There are so many touched by you you can’t even imagine. ♥️