I've grown weary...

 I’ve grown weary of the phrases that try to smooth over grief with certainty.

“Everything happens for a reason.” 

“She’s in a better place.” 

“God needed her more.”

The phrases don’t soothe; they silence. They suggest that devastation is part of some divine logic, that unbearable loss has a tidy explanation.

I’ve looked around, and I just don’t see it.

There was a flood yesterday. A devastating, sudden flood. Dozens are missing. Children are gone. Whole families washed away.

What’s the reason for that?

Is there a secret ledger that makes sense of who survives and who doesn’t? Is one life more valuable than another? Did someone’s future matter more?

No. No reason makes that okay. Just as there is no reason for Jess to be gone, that makes it anything but wrong.

We’re wired to want clarity, to draw straight lines between cause and effect, to make grief digestible by folding it into a lesson or greater "truth."

However, even as I reject the tidy answers, even as I push back against the platitudes that try to make sense of it, I also believe in something more.

I don’t think there’s a reason Jess died, but I also believe her story isn’t over. I’ve felt her presence in impossible moments. I’ve seen her spark catch fire in other people’s lives. I'm convinced she is "out there, somewhere," doing something great. And sometimes, when the wind shifts just right, it feels like she’s still doing something here. Just… differently.

There is something bigger out there. Something more that doesn’t care about tidy endings or satisfying arcs. It moves outside our reasons, beyond our timelines. I believe that’s where Jess lives now, not as a reason for anything, but as part of the vast, uncontainable current of something more. Something, as humans, we don’t get to understand, but might get to feel if we stop trying so hard to make it make sense.

Maybe it’s just love refusing to end. Perhaps it’s imagination. I don’t know. And that’s the point.

I don’t need to tie her death into a bow of meaning. 

So please don’t tell me this was meant to be. Don’t tell me God needed another angel. 

Just sit beside me. Say her name. Tell me she mattered. Tell me you still think about her.

Then, maybe, we’ll both notice, in the silence that follows, that even in the absence of answers, there is still something shining.

Not a reason. But something.