“It broke me, Emily,” she used to tell me after her son died alone from cardiac arrest the day after Thanksgiving.

And I understood how she felt because her son was my husband. And I understood because I have three children who lost their father.

There’s nothing worse than losing your child.

There’s nothing worse than losing your spouse with whom you’d negotiated and loved fiercely until your lives were one and your future foreseen.

And there’s nothing worse than losing your loving parent while you’re still a child. Those questions that can’t be answered and that grief that must just be lived through.

There are many more losses that there’s nothing worse than, and there are a multitude of us who are living with these losses, doing our best to fulfill our responsibilities and love generously the ones who are left.

On this day after Thanksgiving, seven years after my beautiful, devoted, smart and funny husband Jason Matthiessen died, I feel compelled to ask myself in writing, did his death break me then?

Losing the future, suddenly transforming from part of a dedicated duo to a single parent with grieving children, intimately alone and dogged by the pain every moment?

The answer is: It tore me apart.

Yet.

It tore our lives apart, yet immediately the people who loved us and the people who understood that kind of loss were there for us. They helped me pick up the pieces that could be found, helped me reconstruct his story so we could praise the goodness that was in Jason and the work he did to help Pierce County, and they honored his life with us. And then they helped us pack up the pieces of our life that could be touched and moved us to Sequim to be close to part of my big family.

Now, here, I wish to tell this welcoming community that I am thankful for the people of Sequim, for the Gazette that shares our stories with each other, for Five Acre School which is inclusive of all income levels through their Tuition Assistance Fund, for Peninsula College which does so much to enrich the lives of the people here, and for the wild beauty of the Olympic Peninsula.

Here, through the love of my kith and kin, the support of my community and the people who have nurtured my career, I have been able to piece together a new life and can imagine a new future.

We cannot bring our loved ones back but we can continue to do our best to to help those who are still alive. In my explorations as a journalist for the Sequim Gazette, time and time again the people I talk to tell me about what they want to do/are doing to help their community and how their community has helped them.

This is why I am thankful I live here.

Emily Matthiessen is a reporter for the Sequim Gazette.