Today, we received a phone call from Chris’s cousin to let us know that he and his wife were separating. It was certainly not news I was expecting at all; if anything, I was expecting that he would tell us that they were expecting another child, or there was some big career change move that we would have no idea about. Honestly for me, it was pretty devastating, and I didn’t even know what to say. His wife and I had grown close during our wedding planning periods since our weddings were not too far apart, and we actually learned in spending time together that we had so much in common, everything from our tastes in food and the way we like to travel to our general outlooks on life. We had many Whatsapp texting sessions every now and then, and so it’s hard to believe that now that they are separating that she’s technically no longer “family.”

How do we define “family” anyway, though? Is family just the legal ties, or the blood ties that bond us? Or, is it something less concrete and more fluid than that? She’s still going to be the mother of the child they will continue to share. She’s not the kind of person who would cut any of us off, so what type of relationship are we supposed to have, if any, to her? It’s not as though we live in the same city (or state, or country, or even continent), so it’s not as though we will need to deliberately avoid her or seek her out often.

I just felt so sad today — for them, for their daughter, for us, even. There will be a long road of unknowns coming up very soon.