A Thousand Letters

For time cannot stop,

But moments,

Seconds,

A fleeting smile,

A kiss in the sunlight,

Can live forever.

- M. White

In life

(Unlike death)

There are few constants:

The sun will rise;

Your lungs will breathe;

Your heart will love.

- M. White

"Do you think that there's an end to love?"

Elliot considered for a second.

"What I mean is," Sophie continued, "the longer someone's gone, do you think the love … diminishes? Is there a limit to its length?"

Elliot laid the sweater in a heap in her lap, her hands buried somewhere inside of it. "I think that every day the answer to that question is different. Some days the loss is as fresh as the day the love left. Some days, you can breathe, not think of it for a stretch, sometimes just for an hour or a few minutes, sometimes for days. Sometimes you'll go a day or a week without breathing once because the loss is suffocating. It takes different faces: anger, hurt, longing. Sometimes it's bittersweet joy, because for a moment, you had it all. I want to tell you the pain gets easier, but it doesn't. You only learn to bear it. But there's comfort in knowing you loved and were loved in return, even though it's no consolation. Only a truth you carry around with you forever."

Funerals are a selfless act, a long day of grief to share with others whether you want to or not. They're not about the ones closest to the impact of the loss — those closest must endure the arduous day with their grief put on display, a tamped down, quiet version of the screaming truth. The others feel the loss but don't have to hide it, don't have to pretend, don't have to give in a time where they have nothing to give.

So live, and live well.

"Emerson," he said sleepily, settling into his pillows. "'My Garden.'"

I reclined his bed just a bit and found the hardbound book of Emerson poems, flipping to the one he asked for and read as he closed his eyes to rest.

Wandering voices in the air

And murmurs in the wold

Speak what I cannot declare,

Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,

The whirlwind in ripples wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,

And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,

Cannot be carried in book or urn;

Go thy ways now, come later back,

On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,

Of better men than live to-day;

If who can read them comes at last

He will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'

"Braveness isn't always loud. Sometimes it's silent. There's braveness in sacrifice and kindness. It's in doing a thing that needs to be done, even though it's hard, and even though it hurts."