Surreal. Together with friends, we enjoy a farewell brunch for one of our own. Can’t quite absorb it. Can’t really imagine church without Meg on Sundays or those crucial moments when one needs the deepest spiritual redirection or path-finding. Or even Movie Night for that matter. We sit here enjoying our last meal together while we live a few more days in the same town; weekday lunches and urgent calls from foxholes, each adjusting to remarriage, dealing with adult children, relishing in the role of grandmother, following our faith and sharing our profession. We hug, promise to visit, call and email often. I add her name to a long list of out-of-town and out-of-state friends. Loss of friends and loved ones mount each year I grow older…moves, retirements, deaths…a living being, the world enlarges, shrinks, and readjusts itself as I hang on.