At the end of my junior year in college, while Jay was on leave, he and my mom came to pick me up and drive me home to Cleveland. On the way, we stopped at a motel, and Jay and I sat outside at a picnic table talking. “There’s something that bothers me that I have to tell you about,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to live to be 30. I’m not going to be married, to have children. And it makes me really sad.” I got annoyed at him and said that was no way to talk. He laughed and said he guessed I was right. But I understood, better than I wanted to, how such feelings could creep in and, at least for the moment, take over.

I had my own premonition a little while after our talk. I dreamed that Jay’s plane had crashed and that he had been killed. It was one of those intense, awful dreams that take days to shake. But as naive and foolish as it sounds, I told myself that nothing that bad would ever really happen, because “it wouldn’t be allowed.” You might ask, “By whom?” I guess my answer would have been, “By the universe or by God. It just wouldn’t be allowed.”

But it was allowed. Barely a year after our toast on the beach, only eight months after our conversation at the picnic table, and not long after my dream, I got a phone call in my dorm room. I heard my mom’s voice say, “Darling, Jay’s had an accident,” and my body began shaking violently. “Is he OK?” I asked. Then my mother gathered every bit of strength and courage within her and made this declaration: “We’ll never lose him.” The Skyhawk jet Jay was flying had crashed into the Mediterranean off the coast of Majorca, Spain. He was 24.

I was angry. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t allowed. I wanted, more than I can possibly tell you, to die. Actually, I wanted to exchange my life for his. But that wasn’t allowed, either. I was outraged that the world seemed to go on as it had before. As if nothing had happened. They played the same music on the radio, talked about the same problems in the news. Horns honked, dogs barked, just like they did before.

We all — all — have our losses. And now, during the holidays, when someone we loved beyond all measure is missing, the memories come flooding back and the wounds open up. So what do we do? How can we make it through? How are we to live with the inarguable fact that we’re not allowed to exchange places with the one we loved? I only know what my mother did. I don’t know — and I don’t want to know — if I could do the same. I only know that she made it through, and she brought my father and me with her. Her attention was on us, not herself. For example, because she knew the smell of fresh paint, for reasons I still don’t understand, depressed me, and because the hall leading to our apartment had just been painted, she positioned open bottles of air freshener every few feet so that when I arrived home from school, the smell wouldn’t deepen my sadness. She arranged for my grandmother’s best friend to accompany my grandmother to Cleveland so she wouldn’t have to fly alone. Whenever I looked up, I saw my mother’s arms around my father’s shoulders and his around hers. But most of all I think it was her belief that we would “never lose him” that propelled all of us forward. It wasn’t a hope; it was a conviction.