Sadness in a heap of clothes.

Tomorrow I will be back with joy. Today I have to tell you this.

There’s an amazing coffee shop in the Design District, where my husband and I both go every day, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s a frequent “office” of mine. My husband is more chatty than I but we both love the owner and his righthand man (we know their names; I don’t feel right saying them), who take turns running the place or are together during the busiest hours.

This younger man is handsome and even younger than his 20 something years. We were going back-and-forth about T-shirt sizing and he said “this is the size I wear” and so that was the size I bought my son. He would always laugh. See me coming and have my drink ready: cappuccino with pistachio milk. Just very bouncy, bouncing everywhere, bouncing to put a sign up when he went to the restroom. His mom works in the same marketplace as my coffee shop and and bakes for them.

He had saved up for a motorcycle, which I learned from my husband (again, he’s more chatty; I just tip well and say a warm hello). The bike hadn’t come yet and in the meantime, he was taking care of a friend’s. He just got a raise. After work he was going home to watch a movie with his girlfriend and his mom. The bike spun out of control, and he went into a coma.

My husband Jim would get updates from his boss, the shop owner. I could only tell him that I was sorry, and it was too hard to ask more. From Jim I learned he had two heart attacks while in the coma. And that someone set up a GoFundMe we could contribute to for the medical bills.

And then yesterday I was sitting some tables away from the coffee shop counter with tea, and found myself moving a little to the songs that were playing while writing my last newsletter. I watched people go up to the counter and have conversations, and I stopped bouncing, and I started to worry. I wouldn’t really allow myself to ask the owner. I suppose I wasn’t ready to know. And I hoped that the sad feeling was the sad feeling from before, about the coma. You can come out of a coma. People do. But I told my husband to check in while he was on his walk.

And this young man had had a stroke and died.

A strange thing to lose someone who is not a friend friend, but a friend. I didn’t really know him, but I knew him. I cared about him.

I called my mom and she said “life is sorrow.” And through my tears, I said “life is joy.” Mostly because I needed to hear the words myself.

I feel some happiness every day. But I am only able to feel it because I am so able to compartmentalize. I am so able to be in some joyful moment and not think about the fact that side by side with that moment, to say nothing of all the hatefulness and so much more, everyone is dying — we are born and we die. It’s heartbreaking when it’s too soon. And it’s even heartbreaking when it’s technically not too soon. I have a friend whose grandfather is 95. And depressed and failing. He has lived long. It’s still sad. My friend will pick him up from rehab and carry him into his home this weekend.

Every day I think about clothes. And it’s so weird to even think about these things in the midst of this tragic human condition.

Thinking about clothes is a joyful diversion. I can tell you all the reasons why it’s more. why it’s actually important. I can convince you. I can convince myself. But even if it is nothing more than joyful diversion, those joyful diversions themselves are survival. I think life is a series of joyful diversions — falling in and out of love, choosing food for dinner, reading books, making friends, making homes, these things that enable us to go on. In a world where we lost this young man. On a trip that you know ends in sadness.

That’s why we need to get lost in books and in love, and yes, in clothes, in all of it. We are taking this beautiful, heartbreaking trip — and we have to wake up every day and find a way to fly.