On a whim…

There is a kind of fullness that doesn’t feel like happiness and doesn’t ask to be.

It isn’t sweet. It isn’t savory.

It simply rests.

Tonight I feel absence more clearly—not only my own, but the quiet spaces carried by people I love and others I care about. Some have lost children. Some have buried spouses. Some have said goodbye to friends only days ago. Some may not feel anything sharp at all—only a hush they can’t quite name.

I don’t know what anyone else is carrying tonight. I don’t even know that they are struggling. But I know that if I were standing where they stand, this night would ask something of me.

I sat with family today, grateful and at peace, and still aware that the deepest part of me was keeping watch elsewhere. Not lost. Not lonely. Just faithful—to love that has shaped a life, and to lives shaped by love that did not end when death arrived.

This isn’t grief that wants to be fixed.

It’s recognition.

I’m learning that much of what draws me to write is not the need to be understood, but the hope of finding witnesses—people willing to stand quietly together and notice what still abides. How love, once fully given, continues to act in the world through memory, attention, and changed lives.

If something in these words feels familiar to you tonight—unnamed but steady—know this: you are not behind, and you are not alone. Some things do not pass. They remain. And learning to live with them is its own kind of peace.