I want to say thank you to those of you who read this, who follow our journey, who respond in beautiful ways, who bear witness to this grief, as beastly as it is, in order to help me honor my son, as compact as his life was. When you tell me you read these words and that they affect you and that you hear me, it also helps me feel less alone in this, which is a gift during a long span of days that have added up to two and a half months without Lorenzo. To all of you who have emerged and stayed close, I say thank you.

Valparaíso, Chile.

A friend from New York deserves an extra big thank you. Mr. Jason Valenta flew in last week to make me smile, distract me with his gorgeous wit, and reminisce about when we first overlapped 12 years ago. We were both in our early 20s, both from San Francisco, and both working at Lotus the summer it opened in New York City. It was 2000—a decadent, distracted era—and I knew I was living a “time of my life” as it unfolded. I didn’t need reflection to know I would never stand in exactly that spot again, outside a top nightclub, clipping or unclipping a velvet rope, in control of something as coveted and out of reach for the layperson as entry. It was where “J.Lo” turned 30. It was where I first realized how far money and beauty could take you in a city like New York, chock-full of money and beauty. It was where I was young.

Where street art is in abundance.

It was my job to hold a clipboard with each owner’s guest list and to “make it pretty inside,” as one owner put it. I did for that summer, as I teetered on heels and the sun set over the Hudson River that bordered the Meatpacking District. When we got off work in the wee hours, Jason would hook me and my broken feet onto his back and carry me down the street for a shift drink. From the moment we met, he taught me how to make it in New York or at least dared me to go down trying. Jason never did go down. Today, he is as amazing as ever with as amazing a job as ever. I headed back to California a few years later for my own comfortable version of amazing, but for those hot NY nights, he showed me how to serve (“left to right”), what to order (“something red and fabulous”), and where to do it (“The Tapioca Room, honey”).

As are these hillsides.

He is no stranger to the Southern Hemisphere, so when business took him to Buenos Aires recently, he popped over to Santiago for a few days to lift my spirits. We ate at all the good restaurants, talked about Pablo Neruda, drooled over the views from the tippy top of the W Hotel, and escaped to Valparaíso for a particularly sunny day sandwiched on either side by 48 hours of rain. We took steep, rickety trams up two of the magical port city’s some 41 hills and walked others. During its heyday, “Valpo” was known to some as “Little San Francisco,” and if we didn’t feel right at home with its colorful murals, endless hills, nearby Pacific Ocean, and laid-back bohemian vibe.

Reminiscent of SF’s Painted Ladies and power lines.

Around each corner was another masterpiece. If windows were broken or siding rusted, those cracks in the exterior provided another vantage point. The colors were just as bright and the magic of a city that undulates on its own waves just as uplifting. The street dogs even seemed to have a different gait than the ones here in Santiago.

Could this four-legged friend be Ruby’s papi?

Ryan and I were able to breathe deeply in the way proximity to blue ocean, crisp air, and new discoveries can. So, I embed a few of those discoveries here, to add some flair to your day and to prove that Ryan and I still see in color. We welcome the glimmers—of light, of sound, of salty air, of hope for more carefree days like this one to follow.

I’ll take the glimmer wherever I can find it.

But that does not mean we don’t still have our jackets on, the ones we put on the day our son died. So, we smile in mixed company and show the world that we are still here. We seem to be handling things well because we can seem to be handling things well. I know just as assuredly that our summer of innocence is over as when I knew it was underway. Jason has witnessed both: the young girl who didn’t know which way she was walking on the streets of New York and the wizened woman winding her way up foreign hillsides.

Good advice: “Turn off the TV. Live your life.”

Twelve years ago, it was all ahead of Jason and me: the ecstasy and the misery of being young and breaking even in New York City, falling in and out of love with our adventures of choice, and meeting up in Paris, San Francisco, and now Santiago. Much more is still ahead. We are planning to meet up in Buenos Aires next. While that may only be a scant few months away from now, it is a longer stretch of time than the one I have lived through since May 28, when my life changed more quickly in 12 hours than it has over the past 12 years. So, who is to say who we will be at that next rendezvous?

A tram eyeing the grand Pacific.

I do know it was lovely, for a few days, to take off our shoes and let Jason carry us off somewhere. But eventually you come down the hill, the sun sets, you pull the jacket close across your chest, and in some strange way, that is when things feel balanced again, with the grief back in place and the quiet restored because as much as we love to try, it’s hard to be the people we used to be.