Be extremely careful on how you handle love. It is a fragile and tenuous thing, yet at the same time it can be as unyielding and as endurable as iron. But the moment you take it for granted or toss it aside is the moment when missing love will become most unexpected. You don't lose a person all at once. You lose them as you loved them... in pieces and over time—you start to lose their scent from your clothes, first. Their side of the bed now seems ghastly, derelict, as though looking at an old tomb with no corpse. Gradually and ever so vigilantly, you add up all the parts of them that are gone now: lost opportunities, lost possibilities. And when you reach a number that is so great you start to understand that nothing really belongs to you expect what that person was willing to give. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, is the part you have to make up as you go. Losing love never feels real at first, but when it starts too, it will take your breath away.