On the evening my mother-in-law died, I drove to pick up Josiah from soccer practice, thinking about how there is no good way to tell a grandson that his grandmother is gone.
The moon rose, a perfect crescent hung low in the clear sky. Under the expanse of the night, the boundary between earth and heaven felt blurry. She was Here, and then she was There, a moment later.
Eternity is not so far away as we think it is. It is right there, one breath away, as simple as pulling back a curtain.
The shock of losing a parent is kind of like the shock of aging. (Hey now, how can I possibly be turning 45? Only old people are 45.) You know it’s coming, but still, it takes you aback when it actually happens. Not everyone loses a child in their lifetime, but everyone will lose their parents. It’s “normal,” but that doesn’t make it any less astonishing.
A parent is a fixed mark in life. Lose one, and the earth shifts under you. Life gets divided into two segments: Before Mom, and After Mom.