The God of Endings

by Jacqueline Holland

How curious it is that in nature, the most vibrant colors are those that precede death. The delicate pinks and blues of spring are wan in comparison to the dramatic crimson of the hawthorn berries or the bloody gashes of the buckthorn leaves in late November. Stars blaze pale in their infancy, but in old age they melt and simmer in reds and oranges just as the oaks and maples do.

Youth, it seems, is a state of diffuse abundance, while death’s approach concentrates.

children carry the year in with them.

For a long time, I troubled myself with all the pain and suffering in the world. I struggled too long against the riptide of reality to the point of exhaustion, to drowning. What did it gain me or anyone? Nothing. Swim with the tide, not against, they say. Busy yourself in your greenhouse, remain untroubled, avoid becoming attached to any one blossom because the day comes when every flower fades, and then it must be cut off, tossed outside, and forgotten.

The most buzzingly alive a person will ever be they are at three, four, five years old. Preschool is a line drive, a Slip ’N Slide, a mad dash to something else. Enjoy, but do not get attached. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow it all slips away to puberty and acne and angst.

Hand, nose, and forehead prints are stamped across the glass: evidence of the great fascination and perhaps inarticulable sympathy that the children feel for these tiny creatures, who are performing their brief, miraculous transformations at only a slightly more dramatic rate than the children themselves.

Every child I’ve ever known has been afflicted with a desperate mania for ringing doorbells, pressing elevator buttons, and, if they can reach them, flipping light switches on and off.

the helpless horror of watching someone or something you care for suffer far eclipses the pain of suffering yourself. What were her parents thinking, bringing something so vulnerable into this world of crimes and accidents, predators and catastrophes?

Nothing we have is truly ours; it can all be taken at a moment’s notice, and if you live long enough, you can be certain that it will be.

be caught abusing the trust of generous people who have shown you great kindness is the most inexcusable betrayal of all.

To harm yourself, to lose all aversion or resistance to pain, to in fact welcome it, was to take all the power away from those who would hurt you.

“There’s a vast distance between thinking something, even wanting something, and actually doing it.”

look out at the yard where light from the neighbor’s porch cuts their yard in two sections, one light, one dark. Extraordinary how close they can be to each other, light and dark. Extraordinary how you could stand in that light, everything visible, plain as day, and then take one step to the left and suddenly its darkness, blindness. Light and dark, truth and lies, love and hate, all just jammed up right next to each other. The choice between the two a matter of only millimeters.

IT’S a strange thing to suffer in a beautiful city; the beauty of the place is made dark in the mirror of your pain, and your pain is made beautiful in the mirror of the city.

We do not want Czernobog’s darkness, only Belobog’s light. Even us very old children. We forget that light, without shadow or variation, is blinding. We malign and fear and slander the Emptier, Czernobog, the Dark One, the god of endings. Perhaps we would do well to wait, like children learning patience, learning trust, and see what fills the space he clears, what light breaks into his darkness.”

the taking of anything sets into motion its eventual loss; nothing that is can resist becoming what was; to begin presumes the acceptance of an end.

How presumptuous is the gift of life? What arrogance is implicit in the act of love that calls another into existence? This world, my love, I give it to you. All of it. You’re welcome, and I’m sorry.