I'd like to believe...

It all started to really unravel a couple of years ago. My uncle/brother/friend was rushed to the hospital. For several days, my family gathered together to tell him we loved him, to tell old funny stories in the waiting room, and ultimately to see him off into the great beyond. I held my grandmother's portable oxygen machine for her so she could hold her baby's hand as he left this world. Four months later, my slightly smaller family gathered at the hospital to tell her goodbye as well. This time, there were fewer stories. She held me in her hospital bed and said my name over and over like a mantra for an hour. This time, I could not stay. Almost exactly one year later, I stood in a hospital once again and promised my mother-in-law that I would take care of her family, hoping that she already knew, because she probably couldn't hear me, and I hugged my husband, her only son, wishing I could somehow make things better, but knowing I could not. Last week we said goodbye to my husband's grandmother, who was a ray of sunshine to everyone she met. I'm writing this, probably not coincidentally, on the 11th anniversary of the death of my brother, Nathan. He was just 24.

In the past few years, new people came into our lives, and some of those really important people left, choosing to step out of our circle for reasons unknown. (Some of them were like family.)

I'd like to believe I'm going to be ok again, that all of us are going to be ok again, but I've come to realize that my definition of ok is just going to have change for now.