My grandmother died. My last grandparent. She had checked out some time ago, but it is still a loss. I think of her, of all of them, as merely absent, not gone. The denial serves me. Thus far, it’s been people (and animals) I didn’t see regularly. So I stay in that mindset. I just think I’m not seeing them, not that I can’t see them. I don’t know how people, how I would, continue after losing someone close. How do they pick up and go on?