In peace

As many of you already know, Literary Mama columnist Vicki Forman's son Evan died suddenly earlier this week. I've never met Vicki and her family, but I've been privileged to know them through her words, which have touched me repeatedly in the years she's been writing her remarkable columns. I've just read through her archive, and my heart nearly stopped when I read this:

After my twins were born, I understood how life could change in an instant, and never be the same.

I also understood the terror of the counterpoint, “Life goes on.” A friend made this remark shortly after Evan’s birth and Ellie’s death. She’d patiently listened to me talk about the suddenness with which my life had changed, of my inability to think of the future or of a time when I wasn’t bowed under by grief. “Life changes,” she said, “but life also goes on.”

What I could not tell my friend, but what I knew to be true was this: when life changes in an instant, it does go on for others, but not for you. Grief holds you tight, and only loosens its bounds slowly, in unpredictable bursts.

As grief holds you tight again, Vicki, I pray you feel its bounds loosening in time as well. I grieve your loss, and I thank you for sharing Evan's life with me, with all of us.

Evan David Kamida
July 30, 2000 - July 24, 2008

There's a brief tribute to Evan at Vicki's column site, and information about contributing to a memorial fund.