Death. Read that word again - death. Feel it. Face it. And let it evoke an image. It can be the face of someone you've lost. Or, someone you fear losing. But then it can also be the picture of a vague memory, maybe of a place, or of a moment. For, death is more than the profoundly mundane act of passing away. It is, in its very essence, the birth of an emotion. That emotion can be guilt. It can be grief. There are times when it can even be relief. But it's yours, whatever it is. It's yours to accept, yours to process, and yours to go to sleep at night with.

That's how deeply personal this aspect of the human condition is. But we are also flesh-and-bones products peopling the world at the end of the day. So, if death takes away a loved one, most of us feel an overriding sense of trauma that drives us helpless. Sometimes, however, we have the luxury of preparing for it, like it may be with an ailing grandparent. At other times, the ground is taken away from beneath our feet. And a parent losing a child is possibly the closest example of death socking a person under the chin, knocking the lights out without warning.