I’m a mother. A mommy. I’m overwhelmed, and so happy.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

I’m not sure if I’m talking to God, or Adrian, or Nathan, or even to Leanne for making me a mommy, but I’m thankful.

The art to living is hard to learn, there’s grief and loss and sorrow and pain, but there’s also joy and fulfillment and meaning, and you can’t have one without the other. The pain makes joy more potent, I think. It doesn’t mean you seek the pain or want it or like it, but when you find the joy after the pain has healed, you understand more fully that the dawn of redemption only comes after the long night of sorrow has passed.

I found mine. The sorrow was long and the pain deep, so much that there were days I wasn’t sure I’d find any more tomorrows, that I wasn’t sure there’d be any more joy. But yet, here I am.

Full of joy, overflowing with hope for the future. Grateful for the now. It doesn’t make the sorrow of loss hurt any less, but I know now that you can survive it. And maybe, if you can hold on a little longer, if you can try to trade hope for despair, you’ll find something beyond the sorrow.

You won’t forget.

There’s no replacing those whom you’ve lost, those who have been taken too soon. But you can still live. And if they’re anything like my dear, beloved, departed Adrian, they’d want you to live on, to find hope, to seek new meaning and new joy.

That, I believe, is the Art to Living.

THE END

A Note From Jasinda & Jack

A few things, before you go.

First: no, neither of us are dying! Just forestalling any worries you may have about this being in some way autobiographical.

Second: if you’ve read anything else by us, you know music is an integral part of our process. Sometimes it features heavily in the story, sometimes it’s just in the background, part of the writing process. This one is a bit unique, in that regard. There are songs in it, meant to provide a kind of soundtrack, but the music which inspired us and provided the melody and rhythm of our writing is a band of extraordinarily talented young people: The Hunts.

They don’t know we’re acknowledging them in this; we don’t know them nor they us, except insofar as we love their music. We’re not sponsored or sponsoring or affiliated or anything, we’re just putting it out there that we listened to them A LOT as we wrote this story, and want more people to listen to and love their music.