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What’s left unfinished? What is it that you haven’t done yet, that you need to do before you leave this life?
I once read that every story is a love story. Love of a person, a country, a way of life. Which means, of course, that all tragedies are about losing what you love.
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.
He scrolled through it, his eyes lighting on the paragraphs I’d underlined. I always did that in books, when authors found ways to say the things I never could.
The thing about death is that we’re all terrified of it happening, and we’re devastated when it does, and we go out of our way to pretend that neither of these things is true.
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. For that matter, what does it mean to be immoral? Is it pursuing your own dreams at all costs? Is it lying to others, or lying to yourself? Is it falling in love with a person when you are supposed to be in love with someone else? Does it matter if you only have the
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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.
You trust someone who makes space for you in his or her life…so much so that if you leave, they will feel the absence. You give someone your vulnerable, unshelled heart wrapped in a question: What will you do with it?
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.
“Love is messy,” I tell her. “Sometimes you hurt the people you love. And sometimes you love the people who hurt you.” This is how I want her to remember me: as someone who told her the truth, even when it was a razor. As someone who learned the hard way, so she would not have to.
