We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

“I know. Not knowing seems to be all I know anymore.”

Everyone dies, and yet it’s unendurable. There is so much love inside of us. How do we become worthy of it? And, then, where does it go? A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine.

“All that love,” I say. “It’s in your very blood and bones. It’s what you’re made out of. So she’s still here with you, Dash, with all of us. Even though we are going to miss her so, so much.”

Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.