Broken and scattered pieces

Sometimes life does not break all at once. Sometimes it comes apart like a puzzle box tipped over on the floor, one piece sliding under the couch, one piece stepped on, one piece missing so long no one remembers where it went. And when families fracture, hearts do too.

Not always because someone means to wound another, but because pain has a way of scattering what love once held together.

My friend sits near her grown daughter now, close enough to hear her voice, close enough to notice the turn of her smile, close enough to feel the pull in her chest. And still, she hesitates. Her heart wants to throw caution right out the window, rush forward, wrap her daughter in a messy, tearful, fierce kind of love. The kind with no dignity at all.