As the Buddha once famously said, life is suffering. To love is to lose. In the natural order of things, we will eventually lose our own parents and in the natural order of thing, this will happen after we're already adults. Except when it doesn't.

I lost my dad when I was young -- suddenly, in a car crash. I never had a chance to say goodbye. He never had a chance to see me grow from a messed up girl into a much-less-messed-up woman. He died worried about me. I live with this. And yet, his early death shaped and transformed me in enormously positive ways. I grew up. I've spent my life trying to make him proud.

We metabolize these sudden losses like shocks to our system, and they continue to live inside of us like fault lines, like the traumas they are. Ask anyone who has experienced any kind of shocking loss and they will tell you: the air today is just like it was on that day; the scent of hibiscus, of an oil refinery, of powdered donuts, brings it back.

And suddenly the tears pool in our eyes, our hearts crack open. We live in all the beautiful, human brokenness of these losses. Our awareness becomes our teacher. Perhaps it even helps us to embrace the ordinary as the amazing turn of circumstance that it is.