Ebb and flow.  We ride the currents as life speeds up and slows down around us; we fight the pull of the undertow, sucking us out and under; sometimes we tempt fate, skinny dipping in rocky waters or zipping past on a jet ski; we take cover when we must.

Two years ago, my friend’s husband died in a freak accident.  Unbelievably.  Essentially, we think he slipped and fell, hitting his head, as he was getting into their hot tub late one night. Everyone else had already gone to bed and they found him in the morning.  I feel a bit odd telling you this, but the unbelievable part is germane, so stick with me, and forgive me the detail.

It was a terrible time, and I felt at such a loss for how to console my friend.  We’re not BFFs, we’re mom friends.  Our boys were playdate friends, birthday party friends, Easter egg hunt buddies.  I’ve been in her house; she’s been in mine.  We’ve made mac and cheese together, wiped runny noses, and visited playgrounds.  We’re that kind of friends.

She persevered.  It was harder than hard, I know.  She was alone with her three kids, two girls–oldest and youngest–and a boy in the middle, a teenage boy like mine.  She consoled them, loved them, helped them move forward.

This year they went south for Spring Break.  They flew all the way to the Dominican Republic, but Julie did not come home to celebrate spring with her kids. Instead, in a horrible twist, an infection took her life.  Gone.

In the ebb and flow, the tides of life, this is too much.  It’s too much.  How can the children bear this grief?  There is no sense here.

For any of us who’ve experienced loss, I think one of the oddest parts is how life continues around us regardless of what’s just happened.  In spite of our great pain, kids go to school and parents go to work.  Groceries must be bought and bills must get paid.  People are sad for us, but it is our life that’s changed, not theirs.  This is the strange place in which I find myself.  My life goes on.  Soccer and tennis and track don’t cease to exist for my kids.  Lunches with girlfriends, work to be done–it’s all right here despite the pain of those three lovely children. And yet I can’t stop thinking about them and the Great Unfairness that is their life.

I’m at a complete loss for what to do for them.  They don’t need my condolences on monogrammed notecards or trite sentiments every time I see them.  Their grief dwarfs mine.  Their lives are utterly changed.  Their outlooks, demeanors, beliefs, everything they know and trust and hold dear will be questioned.  Of course.  And my lone hope is that together, and separately, they continue to stumble forward, through the forest of pain, facing the Great Unfairness, and emerge, on the other side, somehow whole enough.