2026 Wave of Light

Dear friends and family,

It’s that time of year again. The Wave of Light has become a special tradition for our family to remember Louie and other little ones who are no longer with us. October 15 is Infant and Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day, observed through the International Wave of Light. We invite you to light a candle on October 15 (or send “light” thoughts or prayers) from 7–8 p.m. in your local time zone in honor of all the little ones who are gone too soon.

I’ve officially been back at work for almost a year, where the focus is constantly on optimizing things with AI and making things faster.  But as I started to think about this annual Wave of Light note, I was left to wonder what rituals are too sacred to give a prompt.  Spoiler alert: I started this from a blank page, blinking cursor, and decided to even type rather than dictate these words.  (Perhaps I’ll send it through an LLM for feedback at the end). 

Time spent together as a family remains the highlight of my days. It’s the opposite of efficient, asynchronous, and “productive”. A fun memory that stuck out from this summer was attending our first big concert (Ed Sheeran) together as a family.  Side note: this was also an important event as it will also likely be our children’s security challenge question for the rest of their lives.  It was a great experience, and Ellie and I came out of the concert with a new favorite song called “Camera”.  

The chorus goes: 

I don't need a camera to capture this moment

I'll remember how you look tonight for all my life

When everything is black and white, your color's exploding

There's somethin' in the way you shine

No, I don't need a camera when you're in my eyes

And in a flash, it's gone

But I'll keep holding on

To every little detail in the fabric of the night

Never letting go of it inside

That song was especially memorable as Ed Sheeran asked everyone in the stadium to use their phone flashes at the same time - not to use your phone to take a photo, but to experience the moment. It looked like a thousand twinkling stars in the night sky -  it was a moment to be fully present. And I think I will remember it always.  

Every October, I picture the Wave of Light traveling across the world. I think of our hearts connected by love and loss. We had one short day with our precious Louie, but his brief life reminds me how to hold on deeply to the most important things. I hope you share a deeply present moment with someone you love today.  

Some Things Cannot Be Fixed

Happy 12th birthday, my dear Louie!

Twelve years is a long time to live without you.  You’d be well into adolescence now - awkward middle school dances, probably not telling me much of what’s going on in your inner world, maybe even taller than me.  I suspect being a parent to a 12 year old boy may have been quite hard.  As always with my birthday letters, it’s hard to imagine that life now - to picture only my ideas rather than our reality. 

This year, the reality of life around me has felt heavier. Maybe midlife is just hard.  Friends have lost loved ones to tragic deaths, gone through divorces, struggling with difficult relationships with children, lost job, and the world around me seems to be filled with instability. And with most hard things, I often try to process it as quickly as possible - to be “ok”, to help, to get past the hard part, to make meaning. 

But lately, what I’ve come to appreciate is there’s nothing to get past. Sometimes grief (which is simply love) needs the space and air to simply be hurt, without expected progress. 

I’ve been reading a book called It’s OK that you're not OK by Megan Devine. A quote that stood out to me is this: 

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

This year I look around our family life, and from the outside, we look ok. In fact, maybe even more than ok.  I remember in the early days how desperately people wanted me to be ok - like the depth of my sadness was too uncomfortable to witness. 

But how I feel today is that I will never be ok that you are not here.  

I will never be ok that our family is “all girls”. 

I will never be ok with your death, no matter what beauty may come from those ashes.

And I’m just going to leave it at that. To let the longing for you remain. To let my sadness for you remain.  To let my annoyance with the need for closure remain. 

That’s what my love feels like right now. 

I miss you every day, my love.  Happy birthday, my forever baby.