Sometimes without your consent, your life cracks into a hundred little pieces, leaving you with nothing left to do but sweep up the shards and try not to think about anything else but the very second you're living and the task before you. 

You report your losses when asked without pity or emotion because you know that yours pale in comparison to others you have known.  Compassion is something you traded in for commitment long ago, and so you do your work and you offer your best without fanfare or ego.

This is what is said without saying, and I understand but not from experience.  My way is to pick up my pieces and belabor them, to rearrange them like a thousand piece puzzle without the box, forgetting over and over again how anything fits.  My way is to broker my work like currency in exchange for privilege--the luxury of company in this catastrophe, a first row seat to a disaster where love always wins.

This is the picture the kid took of you when no one was looking, when all she could see was how kind you are, even when you saw her sad, even when you do the only thing left you know how to do--to give your all.