This Impossible Brightness

by Jessica Bryant Klagmann

All the dark, unfathomable distance between one human and the next—and the possibilities that existed in that space.

“When it comes down to it, we’re all just a culmination of experiences. And when we lose those, what do we have?

They had been there before, and they were there again. They would always be there.

I wished I could say something to her, reassure her in some way that what she’d done had meant a lot. That her life had meant a lot. That people leave in the middle of a path sometimes, and we have to keep walking. That small things done with great love become great things.

The earth was deeply scarred, and the damage could not be reversed, but perhaps the wild places could be mended, reshaped, honored. The best we could do was listen to them, speak for them, remind people of all the wonder and of all they had lost.