Reflection on Loss

I hope you’re somewhere out there, dancing on the stars. I hope wherever you are, you’re happy, experiencing joy that can’t be named. I hope that, whatever you’re doing, you’re loving every day. I pray to somehow reach you, that somehow, I’ll be heard. Still, I cannot fathom what it means to lose someone forever.

We live finite lives infinitely, assuming death exists, but we are immortal. Gods of our own worlds. Assuming, naturally, after sickness comes health. After love, marriage.

After life… what?

We live on presumed timelines that spiral on and on. We end every fairytale with “and they all lived happily ever after.” Ever after. Not just “happily for now.”

Ever…

For.

Ever.

Forever.

Human beings’ lives have been likened to many elements. Just a gust of wind. A candle flame snuffed out. A wave crashing upon a shore. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

And loss is different. For those who knew you. For those whose lives were touched, but not deeply impacted. Sometimes, when you meet another person, their soul is intertwined firmly with yours. Like a braid of thread, a bond so interdependent that if one was to snap, the other would fall into oblivion. Other times, it is like the kiss of a butterfly. Ephemeral. There in one, beautiful moment. Then it flutters away, gone in an instant.

For some, life is a dream. For others, life is a nightmare.

Now that you’re gone, there’s an in-between. Is life one or the other? Is it both? Should I give this reflection up to greater thinkers with greater books memorized in their heads, able to philosophize for years about existence and conclude with some newer philosophy that’s only slightly better than all the other conclusions? Or, should I accept this reflection for what it is?

Grief. Confusion. But still, an odd sort of joy.

Gone, but still here.

Like a butterfly’s kiss.

Remembered by the finite. A pledge for infinity.

We’ll miss you. Forever.