safe from the winter storms

[merriehaskell]

I usually feel like a pretty brave little trooper or whatever you might want to call it when faced with news of death--not that I don't mourn or grieve, but I typically feel like I know where death fits in with it all

Comments

[cathshaffer]

Every loss is its own journey. That is something I am learning. You can't prepare. You can't take part of the journey before it starts. You have to experience each one, in order, when it happens. Being familiar with death doesn't make the next one easier, in my experience. At this point, that is the thing that scares the crap out of me about getting old.

I also am starting to realize that all fiction is about death. Maybe it's just my perspective as someone currently grieving huge losses, but suddenly I've noticed that death is somewhere in every story, and that the greatest stories tackle it head-on. We struggle with this all our lives.

I am so sorry for your loss. I think I would feel the same way.

[_earthshine_]

Perhaps part of the gravity of your loss is the fact that this person is a peer? Obviously we're old enough to know that that we're old enough to die, but i think there's sometimes an emotional level that exists when we feel that connection in a more real way.

I'm sorry about the loss, and i hope you find both peace and perspective in it.

As for your closing comments on God, i'm with you. I'm happy that my definition of God is such that it is the Universe, and furthermore it has the trait of which you speak: death is just a passage from one arbitrarily-defined subpath to another (well, actually, many others -- but i won't get into that now ... perhaps over a long chat were life ever to afford us one). I believe there is much for all of us after this.

Be well.

[asakiyume]

I think of that sparrow a whole lot too.

I'm nodding my head at what cath says, too... my grief seems inverted to me. I can't grieve (not in the normal way anyway) the huge losses nearest to me, but certain distant ones cause the tears to come streaming out.

What you say about the universe opening up--another thought that always brings tears to my eyes is the scene in A Ring of Endless Light where the main character asks the dolphins if the people (well, actually a person and a dolphin, if I recall correctly) will be all right, and the dolphins get up on their tails and sing for her.

I loved that because it was, and remains, exactly the reassurance I want. Not any particular afterlife or otherworld, just: it will be all right. it is all right. In some way, somehow. And the dolphins in the story singing that to the main character were somehow singing it to *me*, and since then, I've thought that somehow, it is all right.

... doesn't make human sorrow any less, though, that our existence with each other here is so brief.