Losing a friend to emigration

I woke up this morning in a pool of sadness. Not an ocean – for which I am grateful, I know what that feels like – but still a pool.

Part of this is the date. It’s the 1st of June, which means it’s one month exactly till the anniversary of my mom’s death. I find this time of year really triggering… The sudden switch to winter, the condensation on the windows in the morning, the frosty air you blow out when you go outside. It all feels a little too much like two years ago, when we knew something was wrong with my mom, but didn’t know what, or how rapidly our lives would be turned upside down.

Part of it, too, is the loss of a dear friend who emigrated to Dubai yesterday and who gifted me this beautiful illustration as she left. For a year, we walked Chapmans Peak twice a week together, talking about all the daily minutiae that add up to the Big Stuff in life. Chewing over work and parenting and relationships and conflict and love and slices of joy. I am going to (and already do) miss her so terribly.

And part of it, which is all my own doing, is that I’m finally reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. How has it taken me so long to find it?!

I love how Joan Didion so beautifully describes the experience of grief, and yet at the same time it’s a little too close to the bone – she’s pressing on the feeling so acutely that I can feel it all again. That blinding sense of heartache. That endless fog of grief.

So there you have it! My trio of reasons for waking up in a pool of sadness. I hope that however you woke up, today is a peaceful, beautiful day.