The Story That Didn’t Get Finished

Yesterday, I lost a friend.

Unexpectedly. Completely unexpectedly.

She and I had been in a similar place recently. Both navigating job loss, talking through what comes next, the fear of not having a steady income, and the very real anxiety around benefits. And at the same time, something else we didn’t expect to feel… a little bit of freedom. After working our entire lives, there was space. Possibility. Questions we hadn’t let ourselves ask before.

We talked about all of it.

She had found her thing. She wrote books, hockey romcoms, and she was getting really good at it. Not just the writing, but the marketing, which is its own beast. We spent hours talking about that niche world. What works, what doesn’t, how to build something from nothing. She was figuring it out in real time, and it was exciting to watch.

She was also just… fun. She told a great joke. She was the kind of person people gravitated toward easily.

I met her when she started dating a very good friend of mine. Our group instantly loved her. And she kept him in check in the best possible way. She adored him. You could see it in everything. They had five years together, and she was genuinely thrilled to be building a life with him.

She also had a 25-year-old daughter. And was so proud of her.

There’s a version of a post like this that tries to tie everything up neatly. Something about perspective, or gratitude, or how tomorrow isn’t promised.

I can’t do that.

Because the truth is, this doesn’t feel like something to “learn from.” It feels like something that shouldn’t have happened.

She wasn’t at the end of her story. She was in the middle of it. Building something new. Finding momentum. Creating a life that looked different from the one she had before, and she was excited about it.

And now she’s gone.

There’s no way to make that make sense. No way to balance it out or extract a clean takeaway.

All I know for sure is this: I lost a friend. And my friend lost his life partner.

And that just… sucks.

What I do know, and what will stay, are the specifics. The real things.

The conversations about starting over. The way she leaned into something niche and made it her own. Her humor. Her presence in a room. The way she loved my friend, and the fact that he got to be loved like that.

That’s not a lesson. It doesn’t fix anything.

But it’s real. And it matters.