When Everything Changes at Once
After a year of profound loss and family responsibility, I’m finding strength in the love that remains
This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
The chapter of deep loss, caregiving, and holding everything together.
In:
Moving forward with grace, resilience, love, and light—carrying those I have lost with me while opening my heart to what comes next.
Entering:
Rediscovering myself, creating new memories, and allowing joy to return.
Between the end of 2024 and the summer of 2025, I lost both of my parents. As an only child, I carried the weight of every decision. There were no siblings to divide the calls, the paperwork, the appointments, the fear, or the heartbreak. There was just me, trying to be present, trying to be strong, and trying to make the right choices for two people I loved deeply.
My father was in a nursing home in Tujunga. My mother was at the L.A. Jewish Home. They were in two different places, and my heart was constantly in two places too. I navigated a world I never expected to know so intimately: doctors, nurses, social workers, insurance, care plans, staff, forms, emergencies, and the quiet pain of watching your parents become vulnerable.
After my mother moved to the L.A. Jewish Home, I cleaned out my parents’ house, one of the hardest things I have ever done. A home holds more than furniture and photographs. It holds a family’s history. Every drawer, dish, piece of clothing, and small object carried a memory. I was not just sorting through things. I was touching a life we had lived together and trying to decide which pieces of it I could physically carry forward.
There is a grief that begins before death. It starts when you realize your parents can no longer care for themselves the way they once cared for you. I went through hospice with both of my parents in their respective care settings. Hospice is sacred and heartbreaking at the same time. It asks you to be present in a way that is both tender and unbearable. It asks you to love someone through the final part of their life while also learning, slowly, how to let them go.
After they passed, the responsibilities continued in a different form. There were decisions about cremation, burial, memorials, belongings, documents, and how to honor two lives that meant everything to me. The world expects you to keep making decisions when your heart is shattered. And somehow, you do.
Then, while I was still carrying the loss of my own parents, another family crisis arrived. The Palisades fire took my in-laws’ home of 55 years: the home where my husband grew up, the home that held holidays, neighbors, family history, routines, and memories that could never be replaced.
My husband and I stepped in together. We looked at more than 60 apartments, trying to find a place where his parents could feel safe, supported, and dignified. We helped move them from the Palisades to Playa Vista, where we now live near each other as a family in two separate homes, close enough to check in, share meals, solve problems, and begin again.
As we were helping everyone else find their footing, my husband and I also had to say goodbye to our beloved fur baby, Barbara, our Queen B, in March 2026. That loss was especially hard to swallow. She was family. She was comfort, joy, routine, loyalty, and unconditional love. Anyone who has loved an animal deeply knows they are not just a pet. They are home. They are witness. They are the quiet presence beside you through the hardest days.
This chapter has taken so much out of me, but it has also shown me who I am. There were times I lost myself in the caretaking, the logistics, the grief, and the responsibility. I became the person who handled things, made the next call, held it together, and kept moving because other people needed me to.
But through it all, I have moved forward. Not without sadness. Not without missing my parents every day. Not without feeling Barbara’s absence in our home and in our hearts. But with a deeper understanding of what love asks of us, and what love leaves behind.
My parents taught me how to live fully, love fiercely, show up for family, and find strength in the hardest seasons. I do not feel like I am simply between chapters anymore. I feel like I am carrying them with me into the next one. I miss them deeply, but I know they are with me every day: in the choices I make, in the way I love, in the way I care for others, and in the way I continue to look toward the future.
If I could share one thing from this chapter, it would be this: loss changes you, but it does not have to take your light. Caring for the people you love at the end of their lives is one of the hardest and most sacred things you may ever do. It asks everything of you, and there will be moments when you forget yourself inside the responsibility. But love has a way of staying. It stays in the lessons, in the memories, in the way you show up for others, and in the way you learn to keep living.
Where I have been is a place of deep love and deep loss. Where I am now is a place of healing and rebuilding. Where I am going is forward, with my parents beside me in spirit, my family close, Barbara, our Queen B, forever in our hearts, and my heart open to the future.
I carry them with me. I miss them. I love them. And I move forward with love and light.
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