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“We’ll be fine.” “Fine is alive, right?”
was naïve, oh yes, but some things, I thought—and I still do think—are worth being naïve for.
“You’ve taken nothing that I have not offered.”
“In those moments of fear of other creatures, it was always important to look for the similarities.
“Life,” my father said, “is what we have the most in common with every other creature. We all want to live and become scared when living is threatened. All of us just want to survive and be comfortable, be happy.”
I’m breathless with the hope of it.
As hopeful as I am, I’m also terrified.
It’s so easy, when things don’t go as we’ve planned, to think that we’re a failure. To think that things will never get better.
It’s strange what hindsight does. Takes all the layers of emotions and flattens them, turns them either good or bad. It can take time to see the shadows as something beautiful.
Sometimes, like right now, the memories hit so hard that I fall into them, and coming back to reality is like waking up from a dream too good to leave behind.
“That’s how the world works.” “Screw that. It should be better.”
It’s easy to lose sight of the sky, to fall into the pattern of thinking that the only things that matter are the ones I find myself surrounded with.
“That’s my reason,” he says. “But I can’t be the one to decide yours.”
Even at its core, even without common experience, there is something universal about loss. I can feel it, deep as heartache. Something stirs at loss. Something awakens to it, like a knowing, like an understanding, that this is how everything ends.
You lie facedown on the cool marble floor and will yourself to sleep. To sleep is to wake, you think. This is a nightmare.
You go limp with their condolences. You stare out the window across the lake, and the blue sky looks gray. There is no music in the birdsong. There is nothing left to feel but empty.
Life, movement, existence—this is what unites us with everything. With every species in the stars that we have not discovered, with our friends, our lovers, our bondmates, our families, our pets, and our enemies. We are all alive. It is the single greatest and most important unifying experience we all share. You would think that alone would build empathy. That all of our having been blessed with, or serendipitously thrown into, a chance to experience a small fraction of all time in the universe would make us kinder to each other or the world kinder to us. But it doesn’t, a lot of the time. A
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It feels like bleak surrender to try to make peace with all the things that have and do and will go wrong in our lives.
This is not to say that in the face of the terrible, we should not fight. There is much evil in the world that can and will be made better by people bold enough to stand against it. There are wrongs that can be righted, traumas that can be prevented, mistakes that can be acknowledged and repaired. But there are things that do not falter, do not wither, in the face of so much goodness. There are diseases that cannot be cured. There are accidents. Malfunctions. Natural disasters. There are resources that dwindle or are scarce. There are crops meant to feed for a whole season that spoil. There is
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love, for our partners, our families, our friends, is an invitation for grief.
What I do know is that I have right now. Only this moment is certain. Only this moment is. That is just as true when we are sad as when we are happy. I have fears and doubts about the future, regrets about the past, surely. But realizing our finiteness, acknowledging where we are, is how we reconcile it. It’s how we move forward. It’s how we live our lives to the fullest, even when scared or in pain. Death, like life, is the great unifier. We may not go all at once, but we all go together.
I hope you one day recognize grief’s beauty, learn to live with the shadows, to understand that the only reason they could be so dark, is because they were cast by so much light.
When you love someone or something, sometimes it doesn’t even matter what happens to you. You just want to see whatever it is you’re rooting for succeed. Or survive.
“We turn our backs on everything they built for us? We don’t try anything? We might all die, so let’s give up now? Is that it? Is death a concession that nothing matters?”
all those moments are worth fighting for, even if things that are gone won’t come back . . . even if we all die, in the end.”
they wanted us to carry on. Trust me. Even if they died, they want us to live. The Stelhari. Gunner.” I look at Kieran. “Mom. We can carry them with us into a better tomorrow. We can fight for a better tomorrow, even if we don’t believe it will come. That’s all we can do. For ourselves. And for them.”
It’s scary, looking ahead. It’s sad, looking back,
