email excerpt:
...it was good to have you around. That big void here where you used to be is getting filled in a variety of ways, ways that twenty years earlier would have seemed the pinnacle of meaning. Parenting warps you. If you invest in it, it warps you in really good ways. You love in a more deeply profound way, but this heightens your awareness of loss and less.
The reality is that we can replace things, we can renew and find new hobbies and goals, we can build new friendships, we can even find new romance if need be, but family is family and there is nothing remotely like nurturing a life from birth.
The deepest decades-long full-spectrum investment.
You are truly, uniquely. irreplaceable in our lives and in our hearts. It will always always be this way.