Life is unpredictable, just like feelings are unpredictable. You never know what emotion will come when you hear of a loved one’s death until it happens.

It feels like I’ve experienced a tidal wave of loss over the last few years. My husband, brother-in-law, job, our family dog, my mom – each one gone too soon. We even decided to move from our family home of 20+ years just to top it all off.

Each grief piled onto the next, numbing my senses. I wondered what more life could take. Then came word of my brother’s passing.

My brother and I had drifted apart over the years, but all of those childhood memories flooded back when I got the call that he was gone. You know, those moments that you’ll always cherish – now that you know you won’t make any more of them.

Laughing uncontrollably as his too-big dinner plate got stuck in the microwave. Lazy Saturdays reading the back of cereal boxes and building colorful towers of cardboard “walls” so I wouldn’t ask for one of the boxes. We had a language all our own, even when our words were few.

Yes, there was distance and estrangement between us in our late adulthood. I can’t ignore the regret I feel about that. But comfort lives in those innocent, happy times that death can’t touch. I cling to these memories now, times when we were whole.

Now, my focus is on my nieces and nephews, these kids coping with the loss of their father. I know that journey intimately. My own kids are also grieving just when life seemed lost enough. I remind them – and myself – that love never leaves us, even when people do.

If my experience can offer any wisdom, let it be this: Mend fences wherever you can. Reach out to those estranged for reasons once important but now unclear.  Not out of pity or remorse but for the basic human longing for connection.

Say “I love you.” now – because you never know when it may be your last chance

I’ll never stop thinking about if I had more time with my brother. More joyful days to outweigh the difficult ones in between. But I’m so grateful for the happy, silly, ordinary moments death can’t take away. May we make many more of those moments with the people who remain. Love is stronger than any hurt – so let’s flood our lives with love and overtake the pain.