When a Community Shows Up: What We Learn About the Human Spirit in Loss

Something happened in our small seaside community of Carlsbad this past week that sent shockwaves through the people who live here.

A mother was taken from us.

A wife. A friend.

A class volunteer.

A field-trip driver.

A room parent.

A flag football coach.

A party organizer.

A friendly neighbor you see daily walking her dog.

A warm smile.

A familiar laugh.

A distinct friendly voice.

Someone who was woven into the ordinary fabric of our lives is suddenly no longer here.

And perhaps that is one of the strangest things about grief.

We don't always realize how deeply someone is stitched into the fabric of a community until they are gone.

She was one of those people who showed up.

She showed up at our schools.

In our school garden - thank you for the chickens.

She showed up for our kids.

She showed up for her friends.

She showed up for my son's world.

She was the mom willing to take a whole pack of boys to the local trampoline park.

The mom who volunteered to coach my son's flag football team with his father.

The mom who, just a few weeks earlier, had organized a wonderful back-to-school beach party because she understood something that parents sometimes forget:

Childhood is happening right now.

The kids, of course, had an amazing time.

The kind of memories they might not appreciate until they are much older.

The beach.

The laughter.

The chaos.

The sun.

The people they loved.

She understood that these seemingly ordinary moments are actually the architecture of a childhood.

And then, suddenly, she was gone.

There is something about death that strips away the illusion that all the things we worry about carry equal weight.

The disagreements.

The comparisons.

The hurt feelings.

The things that seemed so important yesterday.

Suddenly, the hierarchy changes.

We can spend so much of our lives thinking about ourselves—our disappointments, our grievances, our insecurities, our little dramas.

And then something like this happens.

And the entire community stops.

People come to the beach.

They hug.

They cry.

They tell stories.

They bring their children.

They stand beside people who have lost the person they love most in the world.

And suddenly, the human spirit becomes visible.

I saw it in her husband.

There is a particular kind of courage required to stand behind a microphone and speak about the person you expected to grow old beside.

To know that you will go home and she will not be there.

That you will have to parent your children without her.

That there will be birthdays and holidays and ordinary Tuesday nights when the person who was supposed to be beside you simply won't be.

And still—

you stand.

You speak.

You honor her.

You speak your love for her in public because the love is too enormous to keep inside.

I saw it in her teenage children, too.

What courage it takes for her children to stand in front of a crowd and speak about their beloved mother.

There are some moments when you witness something so painful and so beautiful at the same time that you don't quite know what to do with it.

You simply bear witness to it.

And you understand that courage does not always look like strength.

Sometimes courage looks like a shaking voice.

Sometimes it looks like tears.

Sometimes it looks like standing beside your family when every part of you wants to collapse.

And then there was the beach.

People gathered there to honor her.

Some people went into the water and boogie-boarded for the first time.

Think about that.

Adults who perhaps had never boogie-boarded before went into the ocean because someone they loved had loved the water.

They hit the waves in her honor.

A celebration.

A goodbye.

Something almost otherworldly.

My friend, who was also her friend, shared a photograph from that day with us, and I immediately started crying.

Because sometimes a photograph captures something words cannot.

It was not simply a group of people standing on a beach.

It was love made visible.

It was grief made visible.

It was community made visible.

It was hundreds of tiny acts of I am here.

I am here for you.

I am here for your children.

I am here because she mattered.

I am here because you matter.

I am here because this is what we do when one of our own is hurting.

And perhaps this is the part of the human condition I don't want to forget.

We are messy creatures.

We are complicated.

We hurt one another.

We become defensive and afraid.

We sometimes lose sight of what actually matters.

But every once in a while, something happens that reminds us of another truth.

We are also capable of extraordinary tenderness.

We show up.

We carry one another.

We hold the children.

We tell the stories.

We make food.

We stand at the beach.

We get into the ocean.

We speak the name of the person we have lost.

We laugh through tears because remembering someone also means remembering the joy they brought with them.

And maybe that is the greatest contradiction of grief:

One person can be gone, and yet their presence can suddenly be everywhere.

In the stories.

In the photographs.

In the children who knew them.

In the friends who loved them.

In the husband who carries their life forward.

In the waves.

In the beach.

In the memories that will now become part of the childhoods of so many children.

Gratefully, my own son's.

And in a small seaside town where so many people knew her simply as that beautiful kind mom—

the one who volunteered,

the one who organized,

the one who coached,

the one who smiled,

the one wearing the pretty dress,

the one who always showed up.

We now understand something we may not have understood before.

She was never just that mom.

She was part of the fabric.

And when one thread is suddenly pulled from the fabric, we feel it everywhere.

So perhaps the lesson isn't that life is fragile.

We already know that.

Perhaps it is that connection is powerful.

That showing up matters.

That the ordinary things we do for one another are rarely as ordinary as we think.

Take the kids to the trampoline park.

Coach the football team.

Organize the beach party.

Walk the dog.

Smile at someone.

Say yes to the invitation.

Get into the ocean.

Make the memory.

Because we never really know which ordinary Tuesday will become someone's most important memory.

And we never know how many lives we are quietly touching simply by showing up.

This week, our community showed up for her.

And in doing so, we reminded ourselves of something beautiful:

We are not meant to carry grief alone.

Sometimes the whole Carlsbad “Village” carries it with us.

And sometimes, when we are lucky enough to be part of a community that understands this, love becomes bigger than loss.

Not because the loss hurts any less.

But because we don't have to stand in the hurt by ourselves.

We carry her with us.

We carry one another.

We keep showing up.

One thread in the fabric,

Mandy