Two moms’ deaths made headlines recently: Tatiana Schlossberg and Renee Good.

Both stories have been on my mind almost constantly. I was profoundly moved by Schlossberg’s piece in The New Yorker. I am insanely jealous of anyone who gets to plan their goodbye.

There would, of course, never be enough time for a mother to be with her children, and although that loss is devastating and profound, I imagine things like letters written to their future selves, videos made to be played on special days, or a million other ways that she may have prepared for her family’s life without her.

Although no one ever wants to have to say goodbye, being able to do so is a gift. Using her last few words to bring attention to cuts to cancer research, and to tell her painful story fulfilled her Kennedy legacy of leaving the world a better place, no matter how short a time she was a part of it, and left her voice for her children to hear.

Renee Good, on the other hand, had no idea that her life was about to end. Her son had no idea that his mother would not be coming to pick him up that day, or ever again. The pictures of her dog, sitting, lost in the back seat of the car, hit way too close to home, as I remembered Duncan, standing at the door, looking forlorn, every time a car pulled in that was not Steve’s.

For the rest of that terrible day, as I went about my routines of picking the kids up, making dinner, throwing some laundry in the machine, preparing lunch boxes for the next morning, I just could not stop thinking about how she had planned to spend her evening, and how she would never again be doing any of that for her family.

I tried very hard to stay away from the video clips for the simple reason that once you have lived through a sudden, tragic event where everything changes, watching it happen to someone else over and over again brings up every emotion you’ve ever had, and none of them are good.

Whatever the cause, these two mothers are now gone forever. As a mother, leaving your children is one of the most unfathomable things you can imagine. It is hard enough sending them off into the world, be it to school, to college, to their first job, their first apartment, whatever, but at least you know you’re there when they need you.

While he was home for break, A and I got into a little bit of an argument. He had spilled something and was attempting to clean it up. I jumped in to help, and he snapped at me that I never let him do anything himself. He didn’t recognize that it was just me trying to take care of him, just a little bit, one more time. Or maybe I am just an overbearing helicopter mother.

At any rate, in this day and age of the 24-hour news cycle and nonstop social media barrages every time a tragedy occurs, it is easy to become inured to the bigger picture. An acquaintance commented that the Good shooting almost seemed like a scene out of a video game. I also heard some crass comments about the Kennedys knowing how to survive tragedy, or that their money would make things bearable.

Not me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the family left to pick up the pieces, families that will never every be whole again. Dogs that stand at the window waiting. Children who hope that when they wake up in the morning, it will all have been a bad dream. A spouse who now has to figure out how the heck to do all of this alone, while abandoning all the hopes and dreams that they had for a life together.

These people may already be yesterday’s news, replaced by whatever will sell papers or advertising space, but their families will not move on so easily. In five or 10 years, People magazine will do a “what ever happened to” piece, and most people will probably have to Google who they were in the first place.

That is all for this week. I don’t have any words of wisdom, or light takes. Just immense sadness that terrible things happen to good people, and hope that somehow, collectively, we can find a way to do better by each other.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News