There are moments we never imagine writing about, moments we think belong to other people’s stories. Last week, one of mine arrived. My best friend of more than fifty years died suddenly. One day she was here, laughing with her family, planning the ordinary things of the week. The next day she was gone. No long illness, no gentle preparation. Just pneumonia, a heart attack, and a shock that hit like a crack in the world.
The shock has many layers. Partly it is because none of us knew she was unwell. It is also because life had quietly arranged itself into an order that felt almost agreed. Her mother is ninety, frail and adored. Her husband has had years of health worries. There are moments when you look at a family and think you know the order in which the losses will come. It feels horrible to admit it, yet everyone understands. When a loss breaks that unspoken order, everything shakes.
Her mother is now staring into a future she never thought she would see without her daughter. Her husband sits in a silence that feels too big for one person. Their children look both older and younger at the same time. None of them know what to do next, because this was not the version of the story they were prepared for.
It is only when something so shocking happens that you see all the tiny threads that held a life together. The notes she kept in drawers. The birthday cards tucked into books. The shopping lists and sun cream and forgotten receipts in the kitchen. All the little pieces of her. I talked with her husband and he said something I keep thinking about. He said that every card she had written to him now feels like treasure. He has always kept them, mostly out of sentiment, sometimes out of habit. Now they feel like love he can still hold.
It made me think about the strange power of paper. We all take thousands of photos, yet it is often the notes, the scribbles, the words written in a hurry that mean the most. Some people talk about leaving a legacy as if it has to be grand. A lifetime achievement, a charity, a book. But often the legacy that matters is a folded birthday card from years ago. A line she wrote that now reads differently. A memory she noted in passing that becomes a lifeline for someone who is grieving.
Her children have been going through photographs. The holidays, the school plays, the days at the beach and sailing when everyone looked sunburnt and happy. The photos make them smile but they also ache a little. What they keep saying is that they want to hear her voice again. Not in a recording or a video, but in words. They want the notes she never had time to write. They want to know the stories she would have told them when they were older. They want to know the things she might have said about them, the things only a mother can say.
One of them said something that broke my heart. She said, I wish she had left us notes about what she wanted us to remember. Not the legal bits, although those help. Not the instructions, although those matter too. More the human things. What she hoped for each of them. What she thought she got wrong. What she worried about. What she wanted them to know when life got difficult. The things she never said because she thought there would be more time.
We all think there will be more time.
This is the part no one likes to talk about. We are frightened that speaking about the future will somehow bring it closer. We are frightened of sounding gloomy. We imagine that writing things down will make people worry. Yet what I have seen this week is the opposite. When someone dies suddenly, the silence they leave behind can feel enormous. People look for messages because they need them. They search pockets, drawers, notebooks, old emails, anything that carries a scrap of voice.
And so I keep thinking about the notes we never write, the little thoughts we always mean to put down one day. We save things for anniversaries or birthdays. We tell ourselves there will be a right moment, the perfect moment, when we say the thing that matters. But those perfect moments rarely arrive. Life gets busy. Children grow up. Weeks blur into months. And then something happens that knocks the world sideways and all the unspoken words sit there, heavy with regret.
My friend was a planner by nature. She liked lists and diaries and dreams. She had plans for the year. Trips to take, meals to cook, friends to see. She had plans for her mother, who relied on her. She had plans for her husband, whom she loved tirelessly. She had plans for her children, even the grown ones, because a mother never stops planning. And now the people she loved are looking at those plans and wondering what to do with them. Should they try to carry them on. Should they let them go. Should they rewrite the life they thought they were living.
Moments like this remind us that planning is not about predicting the future. It is about loving people while we have the chance. It is about saying the things we mean, not waiting for the perfect moment to arrive. It is about leaving traces of ourselves that help the people we love find their way when the world unravels.
If there is one thing I have taken from this terrible week, it is this. Write the note. Send the card. Say the small thing that feels too sentimental or too awkward. Tell the story. Share the memory. Do not worry about whether it is the right moment. The right moment is now. Words become anchors when life takes a turn we never expected. They help people stand when everything around them is shifting.
And if you ever wonder whether your words matter, think of this. A simple card, kept in a drawer for years, can suddenly become the most precious thing a family owns. A few lines written on an ordinary day can become the message someone reads every night to feel a little less lost.
We cannot choose how our story ends. We can choose what we leave behind.
