What My Friend Taught Me Before She Died: A reflection on grief, the meaning of life, and three truths worth living by
My dear friend Deanna at the ATL Botanical Garden 3/22
Trigger Warning: This post discusses grief, death and dying. If you're not in that space today, bookmark it and come back when you are.
Today was my friend Deanna's celebration of life memorial. She was a day shy of turning my age (which I now think is young!) when she left her body and found eternal peace.
"The meaning of life" has been on my mind this past week, as I've sat in my feelings: sad and on the edge of tears; relieved that she's no longer suffering; hyper aware of how fragile life is.
What Does It All Mean?
Loss has a way of doing what nothing else can. It pulls you out of autopilot and forces you to look at your life straight on. The emails, the deadlines, the small dramas that felt so urgent last week... grief puts them in their place.
And in that stillness, a question forms: what actually matters?
I don't think the meaning of life is one single answer. I think it's uncovered slowly, through the people we love, the moments we show up for, and the way we treat others when no one is watching. I think it lives in the ordinary things we too often rush past.
Question for reflection: If you found out you had one year left, what would you stop doing? What would you finally begin?
Deanna's Gift
Deanna left us something rare. At death's doorstep, she found three truths she believed mattered most, and a longtime friend read them aloud today on her behalf:
Forgiveness. To forgive and to receive forgiveness is the path to freedom.
Kindness. In a world that can feel cruel, kindness is a refuge that brings us closer and connects us.
Love. It is the ultimate, the only thing that matters in the end.
What strikes me about her three truths is how simple they are. Not wealth. Not achievement. Not status. At the end, it came down to whether she had loved, whether she had been kind, and whether she had freed herself and others through forgiveness. And she had. The room full of people who showed up today was proof.
Question for reflection: Which of Deanna's three truths is calling you right now? Where in your life are you being invited to forgive, to be kinder, or to love more openly?
On Grief
And this: grief is not a problem to be solved or a phase to push through. It is Love with nowhere to go, and it deserves to be honored, not hurried.
We live in a culture that is uncomfortable with grief. We are handed tissues and timelines. People ask how we're doing and hope the answer is "better." But grief doesn't move in a straight line, and healing doesn't mean forgetting. It means learning to carry the loss differently over time.
If you are grieving something or someone right now, here is my permission slip: you do not have to be okay. You are allowed to cry in your car. You are allowed to laugh at a memory and then cry again. You are allowed to feel relief and guilt about feeling relief. All of it is part of loving someone.
Question for reflection: What are you grieving right now, even if it isn't a person? What have you not given yourself permission to feel?
A Call to Live
Deanna's life is a reminder that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. Not in a scary way, but in a freeing way. Because if today is what we have, then today is where our energy belongs.
So here is what I'll ask of you, and of myself: tell the people you love that you love them. Forgive what you've been carrying. Choose kindness, even when it's inconvenient. Deanna figured it out. Let's not wait as long as she did to live it.
Question for reflection: What is one thing you will do differently this week because of what you just read?
Rest easy, Deanna. Thank you for the reminder. I Love You.
Adela