loss

With so much couch time lately, I've been reflecting on change and loss.
The obvious loss is my mentor from work, who passed last summer and who we were finally able to memorialize yesterday.
A wonderful man, smart and funny, who spent his last few years declining into an Alzheimer's fog.
Mercifully for him he's gone now, but we traded stories yesterday and laughed some and cried as we tried to comfort his family.
*
My friendships have changed forever.
One friend absconded to Dallas, others to a nearby island, and one more just announced a house purchase in southern Oregon.
At least two are working remotely from all over the hemisphere and never here.
Others just aren't responding to texts anymore, or put me on a day or two delay to say they're not going out, just not.
Family is changed too. I feel so alone. Invisible. Unneeded, now that the teenagers are twenty-somethings and everyone has someone.
I know I can find community, that it will take time and effort and a new version of friends and family will emerge.
But, today I mourn.