In day to day life, you learn what makes your friends tick. How they may simultaneously cringe and gasp with laughter at that awkward moment you had at work. How they might react to the car that cuts in front of you in traffic. What they might say to that rude teenager loitering at the mall by the “No Loitering” sign. How they will listen and reassure you on a particularly frustrating day.
This is the day to day, and reacting to day to day is easy. We’ve all done it before. Most of us, 365 days a year, excluding leap year. No big deal. Your friends are your friends because you have grown accustomed to and like the way they react to the day to day. It’s all very relatable–often comically amusing–this day to day.
Until it’s not about the day to day. Until it’s about what stops our day to day. Something that unexpectedly takes your breath away in a way you were always too afraid to even dare imagine. A miscarriage. A divorce. A death. A terminal illness.  
This is not the day to day. It is an upheaval. A make-your-world-spin despair. A hollowing of your every comfort and warmth.  
What happens when this day to day is replaced by suddenness? The intensity of pain from the inside out?
Everything and everyone you touch whirls with you. 
“I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t know what to do.”
Friends stand dumbfounded in the smoke cloud that erupts around you.  
Some avalanche forward, too carried by the momentum of their own day to day, forgetting to stop and notice that you have fallen out of stride.
Some slow down to see the roadside crash with a sympathetic sideways glance, perhaps mouth, “Are you okay?” as they slow but never stop.
Some come to a simultaneous, sudden hault. Everything they are carrying falls out of their grip, and they rearrange to make room to help carry what has fallen out of your grip. They may not entirely be sure what needs to be carried or even what to say, but they open their arms with the utmost certainty. They are alongside you with purpose. As present as if it was another day to day. Your detour is their detour and they patiently wait.
As they ease in alongside you during this crowded, chaotic time, you wish there was more than thank you. They may feel awkward. They may feel it isn’t enough, but it is more than enough. In fact, exactly what they have to offer is exactly what you need. Because all you need at this very moment is those you care about being the people you love, right there by your side, as you try to pivot through the darkness. They are there to steady you. To remind you that the day to day will carry you along when it feels a lifetime away and today feels heavy and breakable. 
As we move from our lowest points back above water, these loved ones are our human life preserves.
It doesn’t have to be much–a card in the mail, a text message to show you are on their minds, a thoughtful delivery showing support, an offer of cooking a meal–these keep you lifted at a time of grief.  
As I try to find my way back to the day to day, it is these friends that have stopped to be alongside–my human life preserves–that keep me afloat.  
Thank you is entirely not enough.