On Losing and Loving

Was it Hemingway that said, “All love ends in death”? I read that somewhere as a young woman. I’d never thought of it like that but it’s true. I have friends who won’t get another partner, or more pets, because they will just lose them. They are so ruled by their fear that they are not living fully. Here physically, but not with their hearts.  (Maybe that explains our cultural attraction for zombies – many of us can relate to them on a subtle level.) We are one way or another going to lose everyone and everything we love. That’s a fact as unavoidable as a sunset. And it will hurt, oh god it will hurt. And your heart will break and you will wonder how you can draw your next breathe. But you will, most of us will. Because at the end of the day, we want to live, we want it so much. We love life and most of us will choose it, over and over, again and again, until we no longer can, at least in corporeal form. Love is more masterful than fear, more overpowering than sorrow. Yes, we will all have times when we bow to despair. It is needed and necessary to honor the depth of our love. The deeper the grief, the greater the love. So cry for all our dying friends and newly departed. Cry for those long gone but fresh remembered. Cry hard and deep and true. After your tears are spent, and it may take a long while, go out and watch a sunrise or moonset. Listen to a sparrow or wind in the leaves. Let yourself fall in love with the world again, because life is going on, with or without you. Will you spend this, your one wild sliver of earthbound time, running from fear or racing to love?