Mack should have turned 30 this year, but the world will pass another Mack-Day St. Patrick’s Day without her. I cannot picture Mack at 30, and it has cracked my broken heart wide open.

Mack in 5th Grade, 2004.

When Mack comes to me, tempting me to eat two donuts or telling me to be silly and stop it with the fretting, she is 10-years-old. Her freckled-face is dirty and grinning, her knees are scraped, her basketball shorts are five sizes too big, and her eyes are sparkling with mischief.

When I summon Mack for a chat, she is 20-years-old. Her hair is cropped short, her perfect eyebrows are framing the beautiful face she has only just grown into, and although her posture is casual cool, the cast of her gaze, straight into my eyes, is seriously wise.

When Mack comes to me or I summon her, she is never 30.

Mack and Me, 2014.

Mack will never be 30.

In October 2024, I will have known this fact for ten terrible years, but the truth of it hit me like blunt force trauma to my chest three months ago when the first of Mack’s best friends turned 30. Up until then, I was always able to imagine Mack living a life in her twenties, traveling, learning new things about herself, making new friends, and finding her professional path. Before three months ago, I could write stories of a life Mack might be living if the cosmos had given her the time she deserved. I could picture her as a junior writer for a sitcom, living a flip-flop life in Los Angeles with a St. Bernard and a Pomeranian, just a Mack-short walk from the beach.

Yet as time passed, I began losing the plot of every story I was writing for her. And now I have lost the plot entirely. Mack will never be 30. Not in life. Not in my stories. Not even in my dreams. I knew this failure of imagining would happen. I knew that time would buff out the sharpness of the future I envisioned for Mack as I coped with the loss of her. I knew it would be impossible to see any lines of time etched upon her beautiful face. I knew it. I knew it. I know it.

Mack will never be 30.

Recently, when I was walking my dog in the quiet of morning, listening to the birds and feeling the sun and the breeze upon on my face, I caught a glance of my reflection in a shop window. There was light all around me. My face was joy. My eyes sparkled. I was carefree, and it startled me. I had not been searching for joy or for peace when I set out on my morning walk, but both had found me.

The reflection I saw that day was not the face of a grieving, aging, lonely 57-year-old woman. It was the face of a 10-year-old, carefree girl. It was the face of a confident, easy-going, 20-year-old woman. It was the face of a bittersweet but hopeful middle-aged woman capable of finding simple joys and locating a moment of inner peace.

The 30-year-old Mack is not here. But the 10-year-old Mack is here. The 20-year-old Mack is here. I am here, too. And I will just have to do enough living for the lot of us. The spirits of that mischievous, fearless child and that grounded young woman will guide me, give me strength, and lead me ever onward to bloom joy and to paint my sparkle.

My two reasons for being: Mack and Savannah, 2004.