We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

“I would give anything to keep you,” I say through the sob that’s gathering in my throat, and she says, “I know you would. I would give anything to stay.”

It’s occurring to me only now that the dying and the loss are actually two different burdens, and each must be borne individually, one after the other. It’s like after a grueling delivery, when they hand it to you and you’re like, Oh! The baby! because your focus had become so narrow and personal during the birth. But now here was the actual end point, which you’d always known but then forgotten in all of the incarnated drama and suffering.