There is a message saved in my voice-mail. I know every word, every sigh, every pause. I had just, moments before, sent a text message to Nick. It was the morning of January 26, and my mother had just taken her last breath. I text-ed something benign like, "She passed. I'm fine. Stay at work." I felt guilty enough that week. Nick had taken considerable time off of work to be by my side at my family home, during the stress and heartache of watching a loved one suffer.

He called me, and I did not take the call, could not take the call. I was too busy trying to hold my shit together, and I knew a concerned voice would be my undoing. He left a message. Called again, left another message. I waited an hour to listen to them. "Laura. This is Nick. I really need to talk to you. I don't need to be at work today. I need to be with you today." It had been his mantra through the entire ordeal. Fairly impressive for a man I had known less than a month, no?

I text-ed him that previous Friday too. Camped out at the hospital as we were that week, he requested nearly constant updates. One evening, he drove me to the hospital after work so I could space out about everything during rush hour traffic. Another, he picked me up from the hospital parking ramp on his way home from work to give me a reprieve from the weightiness of the situation. But that Friday, that Friday was the beginning of the end, and I knew it with absolute certainty.

Some of my family members would slap their foreheads and say, and sarcastically I'll add, "Duh!" But there have been so many bleak moments during Mom's illness, so many bleak moments that I knew in a secret place that she would overcome. We just had that link between us. But, just as she foretold, I knew just when things travelled past the point of no return. I messaged Nick, too grief-stricken to speak, "They're sending her home tomorrow...home to die. I am so cold."

Again, less than a minute had passed before he was calling, and I was willing voice-mail to kick in quicker. "Let me be there," was his theme—or, as a throwback to the Friends reference in the title, perhaps a little "I'll be there for you" instead.

And, he was. He first came to my family home that Sunday. He met all of my extended family after knowing me 22 days. All of my extended family, and under those conditions...I will never forget it...and he did it for me, saying he couldn't imagine me there, without having support, somebody there only for me. He also stayed at my side through the visitation, and through the funeral...during which I cried nearly incessantly—nice date material. He's of a quality that has become rare, invaluable, and he will always have a very special place in my heart and a lofty position in my admiration of his character.

He's opened up his home to me, a welcoming refuge from the dwelling places so full of my mother. They are getting easier to bear, but the emptiness whirs despairingly still, there among her things, and my memories. Nick keeps vitality vibrant and shimmery in its splendor, and he keeps the shadows at bay. He has been a true blessing, a wonderful friend, and something that seems too early to feel for knowing each other fewer than two months. In those two months, however, we've been through a situation that some do not face in 10 years of marriage.

So today, Valentine's Day, I am going to breathe life and tenderness through my sad moments, and cherish this magnanimous individual who held my hand through my darkest moment, and who just might be holding my heart as well. I hope to touch his life as profoundly one day.

I try to fill my empty time with activity, distraction...yet I reflect, sadly, that I've lost my time to update this site. I am working on it, on returning to a semblance of normalcy in my life and daily routine. It isn't easy. Being home reminds me of Mom, a reminder too raw to have close in around me just now. I am supposed to go through her closets and belongings...it will be therapeutic, I know...touching her things, smelling her perfume...but I'm still waiting for her to walk in the room and say, "Kidding!—KIDDING! Still alive and kicking!" I can't do it yet. The pain is sharp and shooting, and sometimes, out of nowhere, my throat is clogged with emotion that I have to dissect to name. It's always there, the hurting, waiting for its chance to overcome.

I was at the gym this morning, attacking the treadmill with vengeance. A personal trainer was there with a client. She commented to me, she's seen me many mornings, "Whoa, are you trying to outrun life?" Maybe I am. Life's been hard...I listen to people talk about their "wild days"...and instinctively I know that my chance for a carefree youth has passed. I wouldn't know how to be carefree anyway. Responsibility adds weighty values to your cares, and I know that I don't act my age. I awoke from deep sleep twice last night, feeling as though I could not breathe, the loneliness all-consuming.

And there's the guilt of it all, the guilt that I wasted my mother's last months in deep depression over Miles' desertion. I voiced it to Dad, who replied that Miles' leaving probably kept Mom alive longer than she would have been kept otherwise. My mother took nothing as seriously as she did protecting her children. She was my shelter, and cradling arms...she was my everything. She was the one who was always there...and while I don't necessarily understand why everything happens as it does, I believe there is a sanity to the web that we are too close to see.

I believe that sequencing is done in rationality. I believe that if Miles hadn't left, that I would be destroyed right now—I believe that if I didn't know the pain of somebody leaving me by will, I couldn't find comfort in knowing that Mom fought with everything she had to stay here with me...she never wanted to leave. I believe that every scrap of pain I've encountered this past year served as a dawdling staircase descending to this point...otherwise the drop would have surely killed me. I believe that I love life more than anybody I know...and I believe that I have this love because of this pain.

Why would I want to be care-free when I so cherish my cares?

So here I am, struggling with how I'm expected to feel and too afraid to encounter what I have screaming beneath the calm façade. I'm avoiding reminders...putting off the inevitable encounter with the woman I loved so wholly, whose leaving has left such a void in my life...and I'm trying to live. Pretty tall order, no?

We were chatting in the "Identity Crisis Room", the one that juts eastward, and has served as a dining room, office, toy room, and family room, all. Mom was sprawled upon the couch, a blanket twisted around her legs. Dad moved the electric fireplace in there for her.

"Oh, I ordered so many things to decorate out here!" she exclaimed. She loved her home. She had but recently painted this room a deep burgundy, something she had wanted to do for eons. She twittered on about her plans for the room, her wall decorations. God, she was beautiful...her eyes were so bright and animated. She bounced up to lean on an elbow, renewed vigor in her weakened body. She wanted my opinion on an ornate mirror, and we chose one together. It was January 9th.

Today, as we left a 6-hour thank-you-card-writing-marathon, we stumbled upon a large package from JC Penny. I didn't know that I had a nail bomb lodged in my heart until it detonated just then. Dad looked dumbfounded. "I don't know what it is," he replied. I did. I knew. I asked if I could have it. He shrugged, not caring one way or the other, and carried to my aunts' SUV.

The sadness and loss is thick and stews at the back of my throat. A mirror set this off...a mirror, of all things! But it's more than a mirror, really. It's an idea of tomorrow being pulled unfairly from our reach. Plans never being realized. A house no longer feeling like home. It's missing my mother, my best friend, with everything that I am, everything that I ever was, and everything that I'll ever be.

It's still sitting in the SUV, that mirror. I don't know when I'll be able to look at it. Mom often wondered after she was diagnosed with Cancer if she would ever look in the mirror and see herself again. I look in the mirror now, and she's all that I see looking back at me. It is a sweet agony.