Dear Jenny,

This fucking year keeps taking and taking and taking. I can’t believe you are gone. I can’t believe you were, not are. Grief seems natural in theory, but when it’s personal, it feels like water filling the air, getting into my lungs, drowning me. I am so sorry, Jenny. I am sorry that I didn’t know you enough to call you a friend. I am sorry for all those people and all those communities who lost you. I am sorry you didn’t get to grow old, didn’t get to see you girls grow old. I am sorry that this world is so imperfect and so impermanent that we can lose people we love in an instant, even before we know we’re losing them. I loved you, Jenny. It doesn’t take much to love someone this good, this intelligent and kind and determined to do as much good as they possibly can.

This week I have to write an essay about the soul. Does the consciousness exist beyond the physical? I thought I knew what I was writing about. I had my arguments lined up. Now I am staring in the grey March sky and wondering, where are you, Jenny? My ancestors believed that the soul stayed close to the body for nine days, then lingered on the earth until fourty days, before finally going wherever it is the souls are going.

If you come back, Jenny, I hope you come back as a flower, or some other beautiful creature with a gift of photosynthesis. Being human is so freakishly hard, who in their right mind would choose it? Maybe, you would.

I miss you, Jenny, I will always miss you.