I always imagined death to be a very uniquely individual experience. I always imagined how I would cope with the death of a loved one, how I would deal with my grief, how I would find peace and regain normalcy.

Although it seems obvious now, in all those hypotheticals, I never accounted for all the others going through the same thing.

Like a black hole in the space-time continuum, death has a ripply, sucky effect, affecting everything near it. I’m just one of the objects near it.

My interactions with the other objects near the black hole are the ones I didn’t account for.

Those really matter - they can thrust further into darkness or help lift us out.

I find that sharing my grief and hearing others' grief helps.

Miss you, Nani (December 2016) and Anu Masi (June 2017).