This Is Not How It Ends

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

There’s no charm to any country that dismisses those in need.

And that’s why I encourage them to read. It’s a free vacation, a chance to visit places they’ve never been, may never have a chance to go. It improves their vocabulary, makes them better spellers and speakers.

I was questioning the universe and why God took those who did everything right: the ones who loved and provided for their children, the ones who sacrificed their own happiness for the sake of others, the ones with only selflessness in their hearts.

“Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make it untrue.

There comes that moment when you’re holding someone and the pieces of you just fit. Words are useless. The parts of you string together—souls touch through gentle fabric—and when you separate, you both know there’s a lingering strand that forever connects.

That’s what the people who love you do. They show up. They take care. They love.

No one ever talks about the end. How in days leading up to it, you beg a higher power to take your loved one away, to relieve them of their suffering. And then when they pass, you can’t imagine anything more horrible. The finality. The dissolution. It’s the great paradox, the ill-fated hypocrisy: In life we watch them suffer. In death it is we who suffer. There is no in-between.

Forgiveness is the greatest act of love you can give another human being. With forgiveness comes the ability to fully love—yourself and others.