I find myself helpless today, searching for something to fill the empty surreal space that has been created at this time of great, great loss. I feel I haven't the words to honor who we've lost, or to comfort friends as we suffer it. And so, I turn to words of a poet I often reference in times of confusion and pain.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke