After Thoughts

The pain of losing someone you love, whether a child or mother or a dear friend, is paradoxically both an event everyone encounters at some point in their life and something no one feels or will ever fully understand as you do.  We each carry the gifts and scars that come from having shared the path of life with those whose journey has diverged or passed beyond.  How deeply this touch impacts us is something we only awaken to in our grieving and is fully appreciated in our remembering.  It comes at first in fits of emotions as we cry and pray and pass through the seasons' thresholds of holiday rituals as we start to grow beyond our refusal to accept change and loss.  Time transforms the inexpressible into words and songs, recollections of memories, and even stories and lullabies for a new generation.

We began this issue remembering Zachary Robert Warnock and his family.  For it was in his mother's writing that Zach first inspired us as we shared in his story and struggle.  Such is the transformative power of writing that both preserves and shares our memories and takes us beyond them into greater insight.  The story of each of our contributors is a personal one and yet something that so often resonates in our own experience.  Sometimes we just need to know we are not alone; and sometimes our imagination is piqued by another's words to consider a new path, a new idea, or a new way of coping or hoping or embracing the future.

We thank all of our Touch family, subscribers and contributors alike, for continuing to support the journal.  Please consider purchasing a copy to share with a friend available through our press, The Lives You Touch Publications. and possibly submitting your own work for a future issue.

Thank you again for joining us.

Daniel Milbo, Assistant Editor