My despair compels me to write and it is not cheerful this despair. Harvey in Houston, the floods in Mumbai followed an already morose month of mourning for us. We lost a dear friend, a brother.
After all these years over a decade after a loss so shattering followed other lives and losses. Some in their ripe old age with tears that mourned their absence, our loss more significant than theirs. And some still young lives cut short where the pain singes through your chest, the pain of missing them as with all deaths but also their pain, their loss of life, their unfinished course.
And now we lose another precious soul on the anniversary of the death of a dear young cousin. Cut short, abrupt and without warning. The thing is we are all born knowing we will lose. It’s pre-ordained that we will have to give it up. No matter what our wins in life, how long we battle or wage a war, death wins and there is no way to beat it. It’s the only thing that always wins. There’s no ambiguity, no maybe, only a certainty.
Life is finite and it’s brevity fails to impress upon us to live stronger until a life is snatched away. Always a startling reminder, startling that it’s startling. Really? Why do we forget again that it’s short? That we’re mortal?
A silver lining?
All this death and dying, all this suffering and pain
All this life and living surely mustn’t be in vain
I have come to know that it [death] is an important thing to keep in mind – not to complain or to make melancholy, but simply because only with the honest knowledge that one day I will die can I ever truly begin to live. –R.A. Salvatore
