Let your love cover me, like a pair of angel wings.

My heart broke a little last night.

One of my closest, dearest friends, one of the most important people in my life, is going through something impossible to comprehend, and I just don’t know what to do to help her through it.

I say “impossible,” when really it’s anything but. In fact, it’s one of the most “possible” most prescribed, most...normal and reliable events in life, really: she’s dealing with the imminent loss of her father.

And though we all know and accept the fact that, should things go as “planned,” we will eventually deal with the deaths of our parents (as opposed to our parents dealing with the deaths of us), that knowledge obviously doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when the time comes. And what can I say. I guess my friends and I still seem awfully young to be dealing with losing parents. There have of course been a handful of tragedies in which friends and loved ones have lost parents suddenly and without warning, and that’s horrible in and of itself, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed the decline of a dear friend’s parent due to a protracted and terminal illness. And it’s so hard, and I don’t know what to do, but I’m just trying to be the best friend I can possibly be, be “there” and available at all times, make it clear that I’m there to do anything that needs doing... I don’t know what else I can do.

And so while I was there “doing” that last night, I witnessed one of those hospital-room telephone conversations, in which the patient doesn’t really seem to be responding, but the loved one has been put on the phone with him or her “just in case.” At least, that’s how I interpreted what was playing out before me.

So like I said, my heart broke a little last night. In a room where it’s broken a little before, actually. And in a room where it has healed as well, come to think of it.

And while I was there, in fact, the many crazy good times that were had there over the summer and in the past year came flooding back to me, and it was painful to think about, as I couldn‘t reconcile those crazy good times with the crazy sadness going on there right now. But that’s life, I guess. And I guess that’s really my role in this whole, horrible thing. Be there through the heartbreak, as she’s been there for me so many times and as we’ve been there for each other so many times before, and be there still to help usher in the eventual transition from heartbreak through to healing once again.