Letting go of someone you love while assuring them that all will be well feels like an impossible contradiction. It’s almost too much to ask us to do. But nobody gets out of here alive. Helping to ease a soul from this world into the next is a profound event, especially when that soul is the one that brought you here in the first place.

For a while, I couldn’t picture my mom beyond that last hospital bed. Her death came at the end of a long decline, so maybe it’s no surprise that more vital recollections of her got stashed away deep in my consciousness. I needed to access a different set of emotions to help her, and that required focusing on the situation at hand rather than dwelling on memories of stronger days. Still, it seemed unfair that even after Mom passed, the happier, more vital versions of her self remained just beyond my reach. Eventually, with time, they began to re-emerge. They returned in no particular order, drifting from era to era as stories from her childhood in the Bronx and young adulthood mixed with my own memories of the mother I knew. The combination of her completed life and my ongoing lived experiences helped me to understand her better than before. I started to see things I’d missed.

A few years ago, I realized that the image of Mom I “saw” was no longer bound to this world. She’d become a vibrant flash of rose and gold, pulsating with light and love. Freed from the limitations of a body that no longer worked, she visited often. She attended my daughters’ weddings, blessed their newborns, remained a well of love and support. She was there during my brother’s difficult final year, so clear and strong that we spoke about it often. Not only was Mom not “gone,” she was present on her own terms.

I wrote the following on Mother’s Day 2016:

This is my third Mother’s Day without my mom, although I don’t need a special day to think about her. Not a day passes where she doesn’t cross my mind. There is always something I want to share with her, because she always wanted to know. We were her favorite reality show. She used to say that she’d never be ready to leave us, because she’d always want to see what happened next.

It will always startle me to look around a room during family gatherings and not see my mom where she usually was (right smack in the middle of whatever we were doing). But apparently she meant it when she said she’d never be ready to leave us, because I can finally say for certain that she is still here.

But they take a piece away from us as well. Their passing leaves one less person in the world who remembers our personal times and spaces, who witnessed our struggles and celebrated our victories. We lose stories–it’s hard to reminisce when our partner in crime isn’t physically present to chime in with their perspective of the narrative. Inside jokes fall flat; the one who “gets it” isn’t there to laugh, and nobody else knows what we’re talking about. We’re left to safeguard precious memories on our own.

The future is impacted, too. It doesn’t look like we thought it would. We lose the ability to hash out worries and hopes with a person who was always part of the scenario. We can no longer bounce ideas and solutions off someone whose insight we valued. A main character available to us in every vision of our future … isn’t.

The person we lose takes not only a part of our shared experiences with them, but a reflection of who we were in their eyes. Nobody else saw or will see us in quite the same way. Nobody will infuse us with the same energy or recognize the same potential in us.

We’re often reminded that our loved ones will always be with us and that we will see them again. Sure, but this isn’t that essay. This is the pissed-off, bewildered essay. What we lose is irreplaceable, and attempts to soften the loss sometimes feel pat.

I do know one thing: our person is gone, but for some reason, we’re still here. We still have the opportunity to radiate the essence of who they were. Did they bring joy? Clarity? Were they generous with their emotions, appreciative of the gifts others brought to a situation? We can still fill the void in both our hearts and the world with energy sourced from this. Emanating positive power won’t bring our person back, but it will reflect the best of not only who they were, but who they believed we could be …

…which may be the reason we loved each other in the first place.