You must acknowledge the beauty of loss: it makes your smile more natural, your glance deeper, your touch more compassionate. How many adults have been toughened to rigidity by the demands of a life, only to be snapped — like that — by an event that should have been expected?

It’s too bad if you try, try, try to get ahead, try so hard that your body becomes stiff as a board, your kisses dry up, your lovemaking becomes the memory of a memory… Too bad. But no fear, the world won’t forget about you: tomorrow or the next day it will give you a gentle nudge… then a nudge that is slightly less gentle… then a firm shove… and finally stick it’s foot out and drop you in the middle of your next step, what nerve!

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

Death is maligned. But only because one doesn’t visit nearly enough, we deck it out as a thief but it steals nothing, how can it be the face of evil when it wears the same face as a birth? In fact, death is our greatest teacher; it is our closest friend. Guará agradecido, na sua frente me dobro. It is the friend who would tell you anything, would whisper secrets about your Self when you didn’t want to hear, who had no stake in being greater or lesser than you, no stake at all… the friend who is at your side from the moment your first cell split into two. Your body is a graceful arc, an arrows flight into the sky and then, aided by gravity, back to Earth.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste, 
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

I didn’t realize, when I titled this entry, that Emily Dickinson would be visiting; but I am grateful she did. How many people are willing to speak about loss? If you are afraid of loss, then you haven’t lost enough. You need to lose until all that’s left is you, whatever is left of you. You need to let go until you hold nothing, because only when you hands are empty are you able to receive. Let go until you hold nothing, and then… gently as you can… take hold.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries, yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

Such small things remind us. A friend feels fear, or pain, is angry with us, and the soft touch is lost, the innocence is lost. The hope that a touch remains forever, just as it is… lost. A fruit grows ripe and rots before you eat it. A glance becomes a love becomes a glance becomes an ache. A toy breaks. A new generation is a wave that drowns you. Your children grow old, and you precede them.

The earth turns away; the day ends. Suddenly, that day has ended in a beautiful ocean of red, never to come again! Did you give it attention? Did you find your moment to taste it, sweet and ripening as it was? Red is the color of slowing, the waves of light grow long and quiet. Every living thing becomes silent, as though bowing their voices in prayer, with the passing of a single day. They could stop for Death, they could stop for Death my sweet Emily.

And so could you.

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