It has been four years since my father died.

Four years ago, Aug. 6, 1999, I thought I would never recover from his death and never again feel happiness. But I did recover and go on with my life. During these past four years, I have tried not to think about his absence. But on this past Aug. 6, I was once again overcome with grief.

That date was a particularly emotional anniversary of a different kind where I now live. It was the 58th anniversary of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombings. Survivors and sympathizers gathered in each city, respectively, to celebrate hope, express sympathy and grief, and, most of all, to hear the stories of those who had been there that day and survived.

I wasn’t there. I hadn’t even been born. I am a 24-year-old American living in Japan.

I looked into the face of a woman who had lost her entire family during one of the two blasts. I saw in her brown eyes the acute pain of losing someone close to you. I felt my pain again. Heaviness filled my chest. A lump formed in my throat. I remembered the helpless feeling of watching someone die.

I unconsciously rustled through various books and papers and pulled out a booklet I had nearly forgotten about. “Days to Remember: An “Account of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Flipping through it again, I saw the haunting images of innocent children, women and men, all in more physical pain than I could fathom.

If only everyone could see this booklet. I’m sure everyone would care. Each person in this world feels sorrow, pain, joy and loss.

On Aug. 6, I thought about loss and survival, conflict and peace, anger and understanding. There seems to be a lot of anger lately. Watching those survivors voice their anguish, imploring us to find commonality and courageously face the world without anger, I wanted them to see my tears. I resolved to tell them I have courage. I will share in their hope for a brighter future. A cliché? Does it matter?

I often sat in a chair next to my father’s hospital bed. Toward the end of his battle with cancer, his body had transformed from being strong and able to horribly swollen and weak. He had lost so much weight over the year and became too weak to walk. In a single year, it seemed he had aged 10. Every time I sat next to him, I was angry and drifted off to another place, someplace this didn’t happen to people.

I was too young and too self-absorbed to be supportive. I loved him too much to look him in the eyes. I remember the moment I let go of denial and confronted the reality that he was going to die. Human mortality became real to me. I knew what it meant and it terrified me. I didn’t know what to do in those five days before he died, in my absence. I just waited uncomfortably and silently pleaded with him not to die. But he did die and death became reality.

Fifty-eight years ago, Kinue Tomoyasa also felt the world slip away while she helplessly watched her daughter slowly die in her arms. It was a warm, breezy morning in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Just after 8:15 a.m., Kinue looked out her window. In that moment, she felt a flash so bright, “a thousand times brighter than a camera flash bulb.”

“The flash was piercing my eyes and my mind went blank,” Kinue said. “When I came to, I was anxious to know what happened to my daughter, Yuchan. I thought, ‘I must go find her.’ When I reached the riverbank I couldn’t tell who was who. I kept wondering where my daughter was, but then, she cried for me, ‘Mother!’ I recognized her voice. I found her in a horrible condition. Her face looked terrible. She still appears in my dreams like that sometimes. When I met her, she said, ‘I was all by myself, I didn’t know what to do. There shouldn’t be any war.'”

“There were maggots in her wounds and a sticky yellowish pus, a white watery liquid coming out her wounds and a sticky yellowish liquid. I didn’t know what was going on. [I tried to remove the maggots] but her skin was just peeling right off. The maggots were coming out all over, I couldn’t wipe them off. I thought it would be too painful. Nine hours later she died.”

“I held her in my arms all that time. When I held her on my lap, she said, ‘I don’t want to die.’ I told her, ‘Hang on. Hang on.’ She said, `I won’t die before my brother comes home.’ But she was in pain and kept crying, ‘Brother, mother.’ On August 15th I held her funeral.” This was Kinue’s testimony as told to Voices of Hibakusha, Association of Atomic Bomb.

We all will lose someone in some way. We all feel pain differently but one way or another, we feel it. With each death on this planet, a little part of humanity is lost. The greatest gift you can give in your lifetime is empathy; to acknowledge you are tied to each person in this world, not only to those in your own county but to all those on every continent, in every country and every island.

Every tear shed whispers in the wind begging us to listen. Listen to the voice of each person who has lost someone whether in war or otherwise. Each voice betrays sorrow for a loss that can never be found. Each voice is a exhortation to appreciate humanity. Yes, malevolence is born by humanity, but we are inherently capable in creating beauty. Don’t forget to see that beauty wherever it may lie.

Every summer in Hiroshima, hundreds of paper lanterns float down the Ota River to “console the souls of the dead,” illuminating the warm night sky. Consider what brings hundreds of people together every Aug. 6 in Hiroshima in the words of Betty Jean Lifton in “A Place Called Hiroshima:”

“Each lantern has the name of someone who encountered the bomb.

You look to see if one of the lanterns has your name.

You look for the names of those you love.

You look for the name of your state, your country.

You look for the name of the Planet Earth.

They are not there…yet.

And then it becomes clear what has brought you here:

It is still not too late.

You too can cry out- and be heard.

There is still hope for human survival.”

I lost someone. It hurt. However, I know now that the hurt is not only for me but for all people. Look beyond your borders and see that every person around the world feels the very same emotions as you. Feel for them. Feel with them.

The poet John Donne beautifully articulates the essence of humanity:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be swept away by the sea, Europe is less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or thy own were: Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

On Aug. 6, I remembered my father. As I remembered my father, thousands of others remembered their loved ones. Today and every day, people all over the world remember and mourn those who die. We are all tied in a single thread.

Rebecca Gross teaches English in Sapporo, Japan. She grew up in Maine and graduated from Simmons College in Boston.