Nothing in isolation. In the five seasons since I last spoke here, I became engaged to be married, built a new home with my love in my previously empty house, became a husband again, became a father. And about a month and a half ago our daughter Milena Isidora died, hours before she was born.

This isn’t intended to catch up: there will always be more to say. But I have something that’s been on my mind for weeks, as I have grieved and exchanged my grief with that of others, and thought about others’ past grief and my reactions to it in light of my present grief and my reactions to others — something about which I have mused aloud and otherwise shared in bits and pieces, but which I’ve had in mind to state out clearly.

I have been many times frightened by others’ loss. I have feared that words or gestures were inadequate or even detrimental; I have feared that I wasn’t close enough to the bereaved to share bereavement without intrusion; I have feared I didn’t understand the loss well enough to address it honorably.

I don’t think these fears are uncommon. Loss can be one of those things which confronts us with the distance of each of our minds: forming and formed of thought alone, inferring the minds and thoughts of others, but incapable of direct contact. The very structures I use to understand you and your thoughts are instead just my thoughts again. So I’ve been aware without having thought too hard about it of the muting effect this sense of distance can have on someone observing another’s bereavement.

What I suspect I may never have been even dimly aware of before is the corresponding, but much heavier, effect that sense of distance has on the one bereaved. As terrible as it can feel to suspect that one is incapable of reaching out, far worse the suspicion that one cannot herself be reached.

But as is true of so many of the products of mechanical analysis, this one is incomplete. No entities, including people, can leave each other alone with one’s thoughts, even one’s thoughts about others. We are each stubbornly ourselves and, merely by being, present our faces to each other again and again. The only question remains, what message will I write on myself for others to read? That might have been the only question all along. And, given that medium, how much do specific words matter?

I learned this quickly, as the hugs and the tears and the words spoken and written poured over me. No one knew what to say, and most recognized that, and many said so. Some who said so were apologetic, as if some needed words weren’t being said.

But serious loss can’t be undone, can’t even be remedied. It is mourned and remembered. And the best help I’ve had from anyone, in all the different shapes it has taken, has been the simple and repeated assertion to me: you are not alone and, just as each of us knows others in our separate ways, your daughter is known to us.

Those assertions haven’t mostly or best been explicit in words. They have been in the simple action of showing up, whether in the flesh or relayed voice, in written messages, in memorial contributions. There have been many lovely words, of course. But always at the core lies the hail, the gesture of communication itself.

So I pledge, my fellows, friends present and future: I will no longer choose silence first or only in response to your grief, no matter the relation or the species of your beloved lost. I am here, and will be. I get it now.

I want to add two notes to this theme. One, simple: despite the reach of our technologies we don’t all of us all the time maintain wide or continuous channels of communication, and I count myself among those who would be overwhelmed if we did. I’ve had several people contact me to express condolences for the first time after some delay, clearly distraught that they had not noticed sooner. Please, be at peace on that account: I not only understand, I was not bothered or surprised.

Two, not unrelated: there are many possible reasons for silence. There are people connected to me who haven’t reached out one way or another. It may be you don’t know about Milena yet. It may be you don’t know how to reach out. It may be that your established or considered habit for honoring another’s loss just is silence. I want you to know, regardless, that I don’t judge you poorly for any thing like that. I assume you are here, in your way, and I’m thinking of you with gratitude and compassion.