Stress is a fickle glue. Our concern over Zach should have cemented us to each other. Instead, we drew our agony around ourselves like a force field. Inadequate protection at best. Distance-maker at worst. It was as if letting ourselves be vulnerable with each other would have made us brittle. We couldn't afford to crumble.

We functioned. We remained committed to each other. But how was it that we felt so disconnected when permanently connected by a shared tragedy?

We allowed each other the gift of separate approaches to the same crisis.

Ambiguous disappointment often accompanies ambiguous loss. For so long we disappointed each other--drawing close when the other needed space, keeping our distance when the other needed closeness, misreading each other's cues about whether an incident was comedic or catastrophic in the other's opinion, misjudging which of our children needed us most at any given moment.