My mom found this essay in the Denver Post and brought a copy of it with her here. She brought a bunch of other things that she wanted me to look at or that she thought would be of interest to me.

One night when she was on a call with a friend at my kitchen table, I grabbed this folded article on the pile of things for me to read and settled into a chair in the den.

I didn't expect to start crying but there I was. I felt like the author was talking to me. I've read it and reread it a few times since and I'm still comforted by it. I also read it as if I'm the one writing it to my Mom or my siblings.

So here it is:

Letter to a storm-tossed friend: You're not alone

This is the strangest of love letters.

This one is not for my husband - the man I wake beside each morning grateful, still, all these years later. It is not for the man who eats chocolate chips with me, surreptitiously, after the kids have gone to bed, the one who will talk me down from any ledge or out of any whirlwind of "should haves, would have's, what ifs" - every time. This is not for the man I married, dark and handsome and mine.

There is more than one way to love, thank God. This letter is for my friend. The one I hold next to me of late like a ghost, there through a veil.

This is for that friend. Or, for any friend you've ever loved, the old one, the new one, the one you will find soon, and keep always. Here goes.

Dear friend, consider this letter a wind-bleached white shell left on your porch rail as early morning barely lifts, sky-cupped, full of light. It's good luck to write on seashells and we need all the luck we can get in this life that may be holy, but is also a crapshoot, after all. We know this now.

We are busy.

We are overfull in a multitude of ways.

We are overtired, overwhelmed, overindulged.

The veins of our days carry us - the beat of children, husbands, wives, partners, work, school, money, health. I make this list sound trivial. It is not. These things are important like blood and air and rain. These things force movement.

But your day-to-days have halted in the startling way of dangerous weather: flat winds, lightning too close, cyclones, or ice storms setting up one after another and hitting hard. You are trying to absorb changes deep and unfair, absorb changes unwanted and unwelcome, absorb changes that slay you.

There is nothing harder.

And in the midst of this, for what it's worth, I love you. In the midst of this, it is not just me. You have not forgotten everything; you must know there are many of us. I see a quiet army, lined up, row after row. This letter is from them, too.

We want to tent you and keep away anything that lurks. We want to touch you to save you and we can't. You know you can't always save the people you love; we are learning it.

And with that lesson comes anger. We're mad about what's happened to you, mad at no one in particular, mad at lots of people in particular, mad at the world, mad at God. We are furious and burning. And we know our pain can never touch yours. We cower at this, then square our shoulders, and are madder still.

We will rail, if you want us to. Or listen while you do - at anyone, at everyone. At God even. He is strong. He can take it. The blows bounce off, become healing, become, eventually, and perhaps long-off, a sort of near peace.

We are here, ghosts ourselves, loyal, though sometimes from behind the steering wheels of our cars, or desks, or from across oceans or states or small ponds full of kids and fish. We mean to be near you. Our intention is constant and vigilant.

We would gladly carry you, catch you, lift you up, make it better, if we could.

Picture this. You are curled sideways on a bed, the low light of almost evening moves toward your house. It is quiet. Children down the street alone and full of play call as they ride bikes away. Tomatoes wait on the counter in a too-small bowl. You are walls and blocked ladders from sleep, yet bone tired, surrendered, still.

You are alone, though picture us curled around you like C's - two of us at your back, two at your front. We fit together like the fingers beside each other. We will hold you up, or hold you still, or hold you steady.

This is your trial, your path, your hard duty now. We breathe with you. Can you feel us? There. Right there. That's us. Breathe.

I stopped when I read this part:

You are alone, though picture us curled around you like C's - two of us at your back, two at your front. We fit together like the fingers beside each other. We will hold you up, or hold you still, or hold you steady.

What I saw in my mind was my brothers and sister and I curled around my Mom.

Obviously, my mom being here brought up so much about my Dad. It's still so new. So new. Just 5 months. My mom and I hadn't had time to process together alone. We were all there when he died and then the chaos that the funeral planning brought, etc. But all that was really shared were pained glances and hugs and words of encouragement and love. It was a blur.

This was the first time we were together to sit and process what has happened and how we feel. This was my time to see and hear about her grief. About how she wakes up scared sometimes in the night wondering if she can do it alone. How she wishes she had someone to talk over the day with or talk about the kids with. It was also a great time just to reminisce and laugh and be grateful.

She expressed a fear of talking about Dad TOO much and having people say "Is she still talking about him?" I understand that fear but I also understand that for me to live normally and healthily, I will talk about him. I will laugh at how funny he was, or things he said. I will quote him. Perhaps I will be that person who others say "She's still talking about him?" But I don't care.

It's been really really rainy here and I worry so about the baby birds. Hadley checked on them today and thought they were dead. (Ever the little scientist, it was more a statement of fact and science rather than a horrifying find - "Mom, I think one is dead.") Wise Peter went out and gently blew on them and they all raised their little weary heads.

Sigh...

He said he only saw three though. I promise pictures are coming....