i've cried more in the past few days than i have in my life, and it makes me feel stronger. it makes me feel like i've been somewhere important, i touched some feeling out there, perhaps waiting for me, or for anyone out there in the future. feelings that belonged to someone else, feelings that i took and empathised and understood and made a part of my maturity. strong feelings. and i never thought i'd cry broken-hearted; but people do.
there's so much love out there in this world. strong, majestic love. if there are better things to know and to admire, i'd rather not have them. love for the beloved, in every manner, shape or form. beloved for better or for worse, beloved in life and in broken-ness and in passing. for all the beautiful things that human beings do, love is the best. love is the foundation and the overcoming of loss. the loss of a full aliveness, the loss of a full life, but more: a mother's loss, a father's loss, a grandmother's loss, a cousin's loss, an uncle's loss, a friend's loss, a loss in a human person, a loss all in all in all. a loss echoing through a family clan, a loss irreplaceable. such is the nature of loss, and to know it is perhaps the half. but not only must the loss be known, the love must be known even more. weep then for the love.
and life must go full circle. after death there is life. such is the nature of things. where loss has impoverished the heart let not the heart be hardened. let the love of other things which require the attentions of love find precious room where it may. for life must go on, and if we are to be any part human then we must continue on life's footpaths. things that need life would need us to.
i suspect there is nothing really worth remembering about people, when they are gone. glory, power, wealth, beauty, piety, honour, pride, station, goodness, love. no, these are good and well but as much as i cherish these things i could but care little for them. and if a person's good things past are unimportant then all the less so is the loss of him. thus, i think, be of sorrow not for loss but for love lost, but be not of sorrow when love is yet needed. and love is always needed, in this old world, always with sorrow and always with preciousness.
