The Words We Don't Have

 

There is a quiet kind of grief that doesn't belong to me, yet it found its way into my heart anyway.

A friend of mine died recently. She was so young. We fought alongside her, hard and long, against cancer, that cruel thief that takes without asking. And when she had no more will to fight, we had to learn the hardest lesson of love: that sometimes holding on and letting go are the same act. I wish she could have stayed longer for her daughter, for her family. But I also wished, more than anything, for her to be free from the pain. Both wishes lived in me at once, and neither cancelled the other.

I've been sitting with a thought since then.

When we lose our parents, we become orphans. When a spouse dies, we become widows and widowers. We have names for these losses, as if language itself wanted to hold us in our sorrow. But there is no word for a parent who loses a child. Perhaps because it was never meant to happen. Perhaps because some grief is too heavy for any single word to carry.

Her mother and her brother are the ones closer to me, and I watched them. I watched a mother stand in a place no mother should ever stand. And somewhere in that watching, my mind turned to my own Mom.

I looked at her differently after that. I noticed her hands, her voice, the small habits I have always taken for granted. And a fear settled in me, quiet but unmistakable: please, let me outlive her. It sounds strange to pray for the loss of someone I love so deeply, but I understand now that it is the kinder order of things. I would rather carry the grief of burying my mother than ask her to carry the grief of burying me. That is the heartbreaking mercy hidden in the natural order of life: children are meant to outlive their parents.

I will not pretend this fear has an answer. No one gets to bargain with time. But I pray, humbly and sincerely, that God will be kind enough to spare my Mom, and me, from ever knowing that particular pain.

And so I am learning to hold two truths together. Life is fragile, and love is the only sensible response to that fragility. I can't control how many days I have with my Mom, but I can control how I spend them. I can call more often. I can sit longer. I can say the words before they become unspoken regrets.

My friend is free now. Her pain is gone. And though my heart aches for those she left behind, I find a strange peace in accepting what I cannot change, and in choosing to love louder because of it.

To my friend: rest well.

To her family: I am here.

To my Mom: I love you, and I am not taking a single day for granted.

There's No Place Like Me: A Solo Trip to the Land of Oz

Less than a week ago, I was in Vegas, sitting inside a story. Not watching one, mind you, but sitting inside it. I caught The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, and I'm still thinking about it, replaying it in my head like a favorite song I can't stop humming. It was surreal in the very best way, the kind of experience that makes you feel like a kid again while also making you feel strangely, quietly grown.

I should tell you why I went, because it matters. This trip was a me-time trip, a gift to myself for my birthday last August. No group chat to coordinate, no itinerary to compromise on, no one to keep entertained. Just me, a ticket, and the radical idea that I'm someone worth treating. We spend so much of our lives showing up for everyone else that we forget the sweetest gifts are often the ones we hand ourselves. Choosing to spend time with my own company, to say "I'm worth the plane ticket, the seat, the wonder," felt like its own kind of magic. Dorothy had her tornado. I had a birthday and a little bit of boldness.

And then the lights shifted, and the world opened up. The visuals wrapped around me so completely that the walls of the room simply stopped existing. Everything felt bigger than the space that held it, as if Oz had been waiting all this time for me to walk in. The colors were so vivid and the details so crisp that every scene felt freshly painted, alive in a way that made me forget I was supposed to be an observer. The pacing hit me right away, the visuals and performance landing together so perfectly that I was pulled in before I could even think about resisting. And the sound, oh, the sound. It didn't just play in the background; it surrounded me, wrapped me up, and carried me deeper into the story until I wasn't sure where the music ended and I began.

But here's what I didn't expect: by the end, it wasn't just beautiful. It was emotional. Somewhere between the yellow brick road and the final scenes, I felt something loosen in my chest. That's the thing about stories we've known since childhood. They age with us. The Dorothy I met as a kid was chasing a way home. The me sitting in that seat was learning that home was never a place she had to find. It was something she carried the whole time.

That's the lesson I'm still turning over. The Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion each went looking for something they already had. Heart, brain, courage, all of it was inside them from the start, waiting for a journey to prove it. I think we're all a little like that. We wait for permission, for a wizard to hand us a certificate that says we're enough, when really the road itself is the gift. Taking this trip alone was my version of that road. Every small decision, from booking the ticket to walking into that glowing Sphere by myself, was a quiet declaration that I already had what I needed.

As the story says, "The only thing that you have to have is a heart, and the courage to love." I keep coming back to that line. Courage isn't always the roar of a lion. Sometimes it's the soft decision to go somewhere new, to feel deeply, to love people and life even when it risks hurting. I walked out of that theater a little braver than I walked in, the kind of braver that follows you back into real life, into the emails and errands and ordinary Tuesdays.

And so, I'm taking a little piece of Oz home with me. From now on, I'm going to remember, and genuinely believe, that I have a pair of ruby slippers of my own. Not just to protect me from witches, though heaven knows we all meet a few of those along the way, but as a shield and a charm, a little sparkle of protection and good vibes wherever I go. A reminder to click my heels, take a breath, and trust that I'm already carrying everything I need. Bad energy? Not today. Fear of doing things alone? Not anymore. There's a pair of invisible ruby slippers on my feet, and they're going places.

So here's my birthday wish, a little late and entirely sincere: may you give yourself the gift of your own company, may you walk the road even when no one's walking beside you, and may you always remember that the magic was never in the Emerald City. It was in you, the whole time. ❤️✨