| Current mood: |  melancholy |
Letter 1: On Death
Dear Kid,
I don't have any words of comfort to offer you, because anything that I say will sound hollow, and you deserve better than empty platitudes.
It will hurt. Probably, it'll hurt for a while. And you'll wonder if the tears you shed are for the life forever lost, or for yourself, for the gaping hole in your every-day reality that this absence creates.
You might find yourself doing things automatically.
I wonder if I should save some of my dinner for him... oh yeah... he's gone.
And it'll hurt. The stronger your love is, the greater your mourning will be, because your every-day routine will be filled with reminders that something is missing.
You might be haunted by what might have been, what could have been, if only they could speak and tell us what they needed us to do...
A wise man once told me:
It's the hardest part of having a pet.
And growing to care about something that isn't a human being.
It's a uniquely human trait, I think.
So hurting and loss, in a way, are part and package of the deal. You meet, you love, you lose, you mourn.
But don't let that stop you from loving again. The ability to love, despite knowing that loss and mourning are destined to follow, is a sign of true courage and humanity. Don't ever, ever let the pain of loss close your heart to the warmth of love.
It hurts. Even after years, when you can look back on the good times and forget the bad, it hurts.
But it's a good kind of hurt.
It's the kind that keeps you human.
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