“There are friends you can get together with after any amount of time, and you pick up where you left off. It’s like no time has passed at all.”

People say this all the time. I am pretty sure that you can walk into a Hallmark store and buy a card that has some form of that sentiment. And there is much truth to this, and I have been abundantly blessed in my life with friends who are living examples of this.

But there is a cruel, heart-breaking reality that lies beneath these pretty-sounding words…the very reason why there is a need for cards that say this kind of shit. Time has passed. Everything has changed. There are moments that are gone, things that will never be the same again. There is layer upon layer of loss, grief that makes you cry until you gag. There are therapists talking to you about doing “grief work”, when you barely have it in you to do the work of holding yourself together long enough to say good-bye – again – without falling to pieces.

And this is what I have to believe that heaven is…a place where all the pieces of your heart can come back together again…where every moment is better than the one before, where there is no. more. separation. from the people we love. A place where all of our favorite stories can be told and re-told, and a time when it just might all make sense.

But we are so, so far from that day and that place, and for now all we have is another good-bye.