When I closed my eyes, I imagined Parker, paralyzed in his hospital bed. Not knowing if he would ever walk again. That was how I felt. Paralyzed. Waiting. Needing answers. “I feel stuck.”

“Stuck.” She nodded like she too felt stuck. “Are you afraid that something bad might happen to you next?”

“Something bad has happened to me. I lost my best friend.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, nodding in agreement again. I wished she’d stop agreeing with me and give me some straight answers. “Serena, what’s holding you back? What’s making you feel stuck?”

Just like with Parker’s legs, a part of me just didn’t have any movement, any feeling. She waited even though I didn’t say anything for several minutes. But I wasn’t so sure it was acceptable to go around comparing myself to a paralyzed person. “I guess, I don’t know, I feel incomplete.”

“That’s normal. It’s natural for you to feel incomplete. A large part of your life has been ripped away.”

“I guess.”

“Can you tell me how you see yourself filling that void?”

“Filling it?” I asked on the heels of her saying the word.

“Serena, sometimes it’s easier to think about loss in terms of physical elements. So tell me, if you were to lose your leg, what would you do? Would you be able to stand?”

“Sure, I’d still have one good leg.”

“Absolutely, but what if while you were standing on your one good leg I came up and gave you a shove?”

“I’d probably fall down.” And then kick you with my one good leg.

“Right. Without both legs, you have no balance. You’d need to use crutches or get a prosthetic leg. Now, with our emotional lives we need to do the same thing. We need to lean on our friends and family. Because until we are able to fill that void, we are in a constant state of unbalance.”

When I thought about filling the void, I started to panic. What if Kori were to ever come back and there wasn’t a place for her? What if I forget her? “No. I don’t want to fill the void,” I snapped.

Catherine Giles and her soothing voice never wavered. “I know it’s hard to stop hurting. We worry that if we don’t feel the pain, don’t suffer, then we didn’t love. We fear letting go of the pain, because we think we are also letting go of the love. But our loved ones don’t wish for us to suffer. They wouldn’t be happy to know they are the cause of our pain. If you want to serve your friend’s spirit, think about ways that celebrate it. Filling is not replacing, Serena. I want you to think about that. Think about ways you can fill that won’t replace.”