The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

Ancient Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew.

I know it feels crass to talk about death in such mercenary terms, but that’s the very problem with death in the first place. We don’t know how to talk about it. We use euphemisms and discuss pearly gates and angels while glossing over the fact that we have to die to get there. We treat it like a mystery, when in fact, it’s the one experience all of us are guaranteed to share.

Love isn’t a perfect match, but an imperfect one. You are rocks in a tumbler. At first you bump, you scrape, you snag. But each time that happens, you smooth each other’s edges, until you wear each other down. And if you are lucky, at the end of all that, you fit.

“That’s the thing about being obsessed with the past. It keeps you from having to notice the present.”

But what does it really mean to be good? Is it finding a calling that helps other people? Is it running to the bedside of someone who is dying? Is it putting someone else’s needs before your own? You could argue, I suppose, that any of those actions are about not selflessness, but martyrdom. Driven not by ethics, but guilt.

I believe that there are five things we need to say to people we love before they die, and I give this advice to caregivers: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. I tell them that they can interpret those prompts any way they like, and nothing will have been left unsaid.

It is a pale imitation of the friend I knew, but words are like that. They never quite capture what you need them to, the way a panoramic photo of a mountain range somehow misses the vibrance and the grandeur.

WHEN YOU LOSE someone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It’s the scar you feel for, the flaw you can’t stop seeing. It’s the tender place that won’t bear weight. It’s a void.