Dear MaryMa,

I miss you so much. I think about you often and wish I could call you. Lately I’ve been thinking about your hands, the feel of your hands when I would take hold of them and the smell of your hands with the Merle Norman lotion you used. I also think about your Tom’s shoes and the way you liked to look through the Tom’s catalogs.

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for the “These Are The Days Of…” journal you gave me for Christmas! I finally started writing in it. I love that you got the idea of making this sort of list from an episode of the Emily P. Freeman podcast we listen to, and then had the journal made to match.

Dear Ashley,

Does it seem like a year ago that I last saw you? I wasn’t sure a whole year had passed, but after checking my “Therapy Notes,” it’s true: it was March 2019 the last time I drove across town to your office. You have come to my mind many times in the past year, but this past week, you’ve come to mind daily because every time I sit down to read a few more pages of Lori Gottlieb’s book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, I can’t help but think about you.

Dear Father Seth,

Thank you for your Ash Wednesday homily yesterday, and especially for the words “Remember to die” that you shared with us. I looked up those Latin words you spoke of, Memento Mori, and I love this simple definition I found on Wikipedia: A memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death.