Life begins, and life ends.
We know this
the way we know the sun will rise,
as a fact, not a feeling.

Those we cherish
and those who cherished us
leave without rehearsal,
no warning bell
to soften the blow.
As if the heart
could ever be trained for absence.

They were threaded into the ordinary,
morning light, evening quiet,
the familiar rhythm of breath and belonging.

We assumed their nearness was permanent,
the way we assume tomorrow.

There were shared breaths of laughter,
tears that needed no explanation,
the whole patchwork quilt of being human together.

An outstretched hand
when the weight grew heavy.
A shoulder that understood
before words.
Someone to call first,
with joy, with fear, with fragile hope
of dreams not yet lived.
Time, we believed, was generous.

Then one day
the world shifted.

The voice fell silent.
The footsteps stopped arriving.
The space they occupied
did not close. It echoed.

Darkness moved in,
not loudly,
but completely.

And we are left asking
how to walk forward
with a heart split open by memory,
how to live
when love has nowhere to land.

Perhaps strength is not found all at once.
Perhaps healing is not repair,
but learning to carry
what cannot be fixed.

We go on
not because the wound closes,
but because love remains,
changed, weighty,
still alive inside us,
guiding us, quietly,
through the dark.

And so, we move through days
that look unchanged from the outside.
Morning still arrives,
light still presses against the window,
birds still sing their songs
as if nothing has been altered.

But inside,
time catches its breath.
Moments hang in the air.
A name forms on the tongue
with nowhere to go.

We reach instinctively,
to share a thought,
a small victory,
a worry too heavy to hold alone.

The absence startles us every time.

Grief teaches us
new ways to measure distance:
the length between heartbeat and breath,
the silence after laughter
should have landed,
the chair that remains empty
yet refuses to feel vacant.

We speak to them
in our minds,
in rooms they once filled,
in the quiet hours
when sleep will not come.

Some days, the weight is unbearable.
Other days, we manage to carry it,
like a fragile vessel balanced carefully
in both hands.

And slowly, not by choice,
not by courage,
we learn this truth:
The heart does not mend by forgetting,
but by making space
for what is gone
to live alongside what still is.

We go on,
not because we are whole again,
but because love asks us to.

The ones we lost
walk with us still,
in the way we listen more closely,
in the way we hold others longer,
in the tenderness that grief
etches permanently into who we become.

The light does not erase the dark.
It learns to live beside it.
And one morning,
without ceremony,
we realize we are standing in it,
not healed, not whole, but still here,
still loving,
still able to see.

Michele Luckenbaugh is a patient advocate.