~For the Ones Who Stay, the Ones We Miss, and the Spaces In Between~
A Season That Holds So Much
November invites something deeper.
For me, it brings my birthday: an annual moment to reflect, pause, and notice how life continues to unfold.
It also brings a U.S. national holiday, celebrated in many countries, that holds different meanings for different people.
For some, Thanksgiving is a time of warmth and gathering with their loved ones.
For others, it’s a reminder of painful history—especially for Indigenous communities across the United States.
Both truths exist, and yes, both truths can co-exist. But no matter how—or if—you celebrate, one thing remains:
“Moments of togetherness are sacred.”
And this time of year reminds us just how many are grieving the ones who won’t be around the table. Whether the loss is fresh or old, loud or quiet, seen or unseen—grief has a way of walking beside us through the season (and every season, for that matter).
Still, there is something so human about choosing to gather. To show up. To remember. To love again.
We Are Infinite
As the days grow shorter and the year begins to slow down, something in us slows down, too. And we remember…
Not just the people we’ve lost, but the versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown.
The hopes that shifted. The quiet ache we’ve learned to live with.
This season has a way of asking us to pause—not to fix anything, but to sit with what remains. And what remains is this:
“We are made of everything we’ve loved.
Everything we’ve lost.
Everything we’ve survived.”
That’s what makes us infinite—not in body, but in memory, in connection, in legacy.
Grief is part of that infinity. Not a stranger. Not a mistake. But a quiet companion that walks beside us, reminding us how deeply we’ve lived and how fully we’ve loved.
The Ones Who Stay
And within infinity, there’s a quiet kind of courage found in those who stay.
The ones who keep showing up after the funeral, after the shock, after the breakup, after the world moves on.
The ones who continue to live—not because the pain is gone, but because love asks them to feed the children, tend to memories, and hold space for others while carrying their own ache.
Sometimes, WE are the ones who stay.
We carry the photos, the rituals, the voices in our heads. We laugh again, even when it hurts. We celebrate birthdays with a lump in our throat. We make meaning from absence. And that, too, is sacred.
To stay is to choose presence again and again—even when our hearts want to follow the ones we miss.
I know that because I would do anything to sit at the table of a local market and drink another beer with my dad. I can’t have that, but I can stay with the ones he loved the most.
And in staying, I’ve learned a tough, life-changing truth: love doesn’t end when someone leaves. It reshapes itself into memory, into laughter, into the small rituals of everyday life.
It becomes part of the spaces between what was and what still is—and that’s where we learn to keep living.
The Spaces In Between
We learn to keep living in the spaces in between—the spaces where memory lingers but also where life keeps happening.
They’re the mornings when we wake up and decide to try again. The moments when we let joy sneak back in, even if just for a heartbeat. The ordinary days that quietly remind us we’re still here, still loving, still becoming. As the work in progress that we will always be, until our last day on this earth.
There’s something sacred about what we can’t quite name—the space between hello and goodbye, between memory and moment, between what was and what remains.
The ones who have left us show up when a familiar song catches us off guard, in the smell of their perfume floating in the air when no one else is around, in the way the sunlight hits their picture on your table—just like life was when they were physically here.
These spaces are not empty. They are filled with presence, with longing, with love that continues beyond form. They are where memory rests, where grief breathes, and where life insists on moving forward—asking us to live it fully!
Because maybe that’s how we truly honor the ones who left—by living the very life they helped us shape, by filling our days with laughter, courage, and meaning.
By loving as fiercely as they once loved us and still love us.
They remind us: it’s not about moving on, it’s about moving with—with courage, with tears and smiles combined, through all the spaces in between.
The Ones We Miss
But in those spaces in between, some names never fade, even when they’re no longer spoken aloud.
For me, one of those names is my tía Lita—my mom’s favorite sister and best friend.
Angela is my auntie; she left this physical world back in 2006. She battled breast cancer and then kidney cancer. After her treatment, one day she felt a lot of pain, went back to the hospital, and in a desperate measure, the doctor removed the only kidney she had left, automatically sending her into a two-week coma from which she never woke up.
I stood next to her for those two weeks. I used to talk to her and knew she could hear me; her tears running down her cheeks would confirm that for me.
Until one night, my friends took me out of the hospital to bring me to church, and ten minutes after I left, I received a phone call from my sister letting me know that—you guessed it, right?—my auntie was gone.
Nineteen years have passed since that gorgeous, tall, wild woman left us, and every now and then, on a Saturday afternoon, I can still see her walking through the main door of my parents’ house.
My tiita was my second favorite person in the world, and every Christmas I remember how we used to call strangers just to wish them Merry Christmas in a Santa Claus voice, haha—or at least that’s how we thought we sounded, haha.
My aunt’s love, kind spirit, and wildness are still with me. Parts of her are in me—in the kind of auntie I am to my nieces and nephews, every time I see her daughters (my sisters, my cousins), and every time I see my mom.
Her jokes and laughter still linger in the air—soft, familiar, grounding, and healing.
I used to think grief was about learning to let go. Now I know it’s about learning to live differently—to love in new ways, beyond touch and time.
She’s not gone; she simply changed form.
I carry her with me, in every act of kindness, in every breath of gratitude. I remember that love does not end:
It expands to infinity and beyond. — Buzz Lightyear ♥
And it’s through grief that I’ve discovered resilience. Each time I’ve allowed myself to feel the ache, love has found a way to turn it into meaning—reminding me that to be human is to be infinitely shaped not only by what we’ve lost, but by how we continue to love.
Yes, We Are Infinite
As this season unfolds, I’m reminded that every act of remembrance is also an act of love. That to honor our grief is to keep loving—not in the way we once did, but in the way we now must.
We learn to build altars in our hearts. To speak names into the quiet. To find sacredness in an ordinary afternoon, or in the laughter that returns when we least expect it.
Grief will always reshape us. But love—love keeps finding its way through the cracks,
softening what was once unbearable, illuminating what remains, giving us hope to continue and to try over and over again.
So as we gather with our loved ones, let’s gather in gratitude, in longing, in love.
May we do so with open hands and open hearts.
May we remember that the ones we miss have simply taken new form:
woven into light, and—if we pay attention—they will show us their presence in many, many ways.
And may we, the ones who stay, keep choosing love as our only way forward.
✨ We are infinite — made of love, shaped by loss.
✨ Somos infinitos — hechos de amor, moldeados por nuestras pérdidas.
