carrying on with love

Warning: this one is heavy

I’ve been dipping my toes into writing poetry lately, which is never a genre I thought I’d find success in.

In all honestly, I found it intimidating and I wasn’t sure if I had “the right stuff” to pull it off. I’d liken it to performing a magic trick when you’re still figuring out how to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a try, and I discovered along the way the healing power of transforming complex thoughts and feelings into short, pure truths. It’s the art of distilling complexity into simplicity, finding rhythm in chaos - another beautiful contradiction.

While chatting recently with my friend Tricia (a fellow writer), we arrived at a shared motivation for why we feel compelled to write: thoughts, moments and experiences are fleeting, and putting pen to paper concretizes them, turning them into something enduring and alive. A way to capture those truths that often escape ordinary words.

A truth, or perhaps rather a question, I have been grappling with lately is how to honor the memory of someone no longer physically here. This November marked the one year anniversary of the death of my childhood best friend, Jason.

His absence was especially noticeable during our 10-year high school reunion this past October (however if I’m being candid, he probably wouldn’t have come even if he were still alive - he would have found the whole ordeal way too corny).

Sometimes I feel guilty when I think about how “normal” my life feels even though he’s gone. I still wake up, brush my teeth, go to work, socialize with friends and live each day like nothing has changed.

I'm not saying I'm unaffected — I think about him often and miss him deeply. But my world has kept turning, as I suppose it has to. Not because it’s easy, but because someone’s absence does not erase our existence.

For all of us who love Jason, our lives didn’t end the day his did. Life moves forward, and we carry him with us — in the quiet moments, the decisions we make, and the love we continue to show.

I am learning that moving forward isn’t a betrayal of Jason’s memory - it’s a testament to it. The love we carry deserves to shape the life we still have.

On the day you stayed young 

I learned you were gone on my birthday last year. 
Now, instead of blowing out candles, 
I light them for you, 
holding your memory close. 

And I'm reminded
With each turn of the calendar, 
time will deepen its mark on me –
lines carving my face, hair silvering. 
But you'll stay untouched, 
forever 27,
a portrait etched in youth,
held in a space impenetrable by time.

So every year I will carry this ritual:
celebrating the years I am given, 
while honoring the ones you never had. 

walk boldly,

Caroline