i did not lose someone in the way people usually mean when they say that word. there was no immediate absence in my daily routine. no chair suddenly empty at the table. no phone number i had to stop scrolling past.
but recently, my mom found out her cousin passed away. and somehow, even at a distance, death still found its way into the room.
death has a strange way of doing that. it does not ask how close you were. it does not ask how often you spoke. it simply arrives and reminds you that life is fragile and fleeting and deeply human.
what struck me most was not the sadness alone, but the remembering. the way my mom spoke about him. the stories that surfaced naturally, as if they had been waiting for a moment like this to be let out. laughter mixed with silence. details that had been dormant suddenly mattered again. death did not erase him. if anything, it sharpened him.
we talk about death like it is an ending. a full stop. something heavy and final. and yes, it is painful. it is uncomfortable. it carries a weight that settles in your chest and refuses to fully leave. but it is also a mirror. it forces us to look at what remains.
what remains are stories. memories. shared traits. inside jokes. the way someone moved through the world. the way they loved. the way they were loved.
in that sense, death is not only about loss. it is also about preservation.
i realized that remembering someone is an act of care. it is how we keep them present without pretending they are still here. it is how grief softens into gratitude over time. remembrance is not denial. it is acknowledgment. a quiet agreement that someone mattered enough to be held onto.
maybe that is why death feels so destabilizing. because it pulls us out of our routines and asks us to consider our own impermanence. it asks questions we do not usually make time for. who will remember us. how we will be spoken about. what parts of us will linger.
and maybe that is the strange gift inside the sadness. death teaches us to live with intention. to love people while they are here. to say things we postpone. to recognize that presence is never guaranteed.
i think about how many people exist in our lives not loudly, but steadily. cousins. relatives. people who are not in the center of our everyday, yet are still woven into our family’s history. their lives ripple outward in ways we do not always see until they are gone.
this loss reminded me that life is not measured only by proximity or frequency, but by impact. by the quiet ways someone shapes the people around them.
boyhood interrupted has always been about pausing long enough to feel things fully. and sitting with death, even secondhand, feels like one of those pauses. a moment to acknowledge sadness without rushing past it. a moment to honor someone by remembering them.
so this is not a post about despair. it is about reflection. about honoring a life by allowing space for memory. about understanding that death, while devastating, is also a reminder that love does not disappear when someone does.
it changes form. it becomes story. it becomes remembrance. it becomes the way we speak their name and mean it.
and maybe that is how we keep each other alive.
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