Tonight I’m hanging out with friends in DC, tomorrow the work begins.  We’re sitting at the hotel bar catching up; it’s good to see them again.  We laugh, tell stories, but underneath the smiles rests the truth, the pain, the reason we’re all here.  We’re here because there are people missing from our lives that shouldn’t be gone.  We’re here because we can’t stay away.

This is the greatest group of people I wish I had never met.   As one in the group says she told her spouse when she called him tonight….”these are my friends.”  These are the people that truly know what it feels like because they’ve been there.  People that don’t have to talk at all,  they’re just there and you know you’re not alone.  The kind of people that hug tight and long, that look deep into your eyes and just know.

Tonight was the easy part of our very long weekend.  Tomorrow it gets harder.

Time for bed, I’ll share more later.