I mentioned a few posts back that I had a college friend on hospice due to cancer. He died yesterday, on his oldest son’s seventh birthday.

My friend’s son woke up on his birthday yesterday morning having had a living father for 7 out of his 7 years on this planet, 100% of his life. But today when he wakes up that percentage will begin its slow, sad descent. The flip book of missed milestones begins writing itself today, page after page.

See I’m trying to make sense of a loss like this by assigning numbers, but of course numbers don’t correlate to the depth of human emotion or richness of experience. My friend knew–for years–that his diagnosis was terminal, and he made an effort to be present in his kids’ lives as much as his illness allowed him to be. I hope when my friend’s oldest son wakes up on the day he turns eighty he has some bittersweet thoughts about quality and quantity, and he finds the number 8.75% to hardly be meaningful at all.

Still, there are so few memories to hold onto at the age of seven. Such grief to be experienced and for so long. So many empty chairs in auditoriums, so many Father’s Day cards unpurchased. So many mixed emotions when his friends don’t begin losing their own fathers until they are well into middle age.

I want to be able to reinterpret this story–my friend’s story, his son’s story–rewrite it as a bittersweet, triumphant arc that makes the heart soar even as it breaks at the same time. But I cannot do this. Tragedy has arrived for the family and it is here to stay, sitting in all those empty chairs along the way.