Just Last Night

by Mhairi McFarlane

Someone once said to me birth was the most ordinary and extraordinary thing you’ll ever experience, simultaneously, and death is the same. The fact of yours sits there, implacably, being so banal and so mind-blowingly strange at the same time.

This is what I never knew about loss—it’s also about what you gain. You carry a weight that you never had before. It’s never behind you. It’s alongside you.

There’s something exceptional about friendships with friends you’ve known since you were young. They know all the versions of you. They know how you were built. They have a map for you. There’s a shorthand between you, and a love that is as strong as any blood tie.”