As the Buddha1 once famously said, life is suffering. To love is to lose. In the natural order of things, we will eventually lose our own parents and in the natural order of thing, this will happen after we're already adults. Except when it doesn't.
I lost my dad when I was young -- suddenly, in a car crash. I never had a chance to say goodbye. He never had a chance to see me grow from a messed up girl into a much-less-messed-up woman. He died worried about me. I live with this. And yet, his early death shaped and transformed me in enormously positive ways. I grew up. I've spent my life trying to make him proud.
We metabolize these sudden losses like shocks to our system, and th
