JULY 20
It is as if the intensity of grief fused the distance between
you and the dead. Or perhaps, in reality, part of one dies.
Like Orpheus, one tries to follow the dead on the beginning
of their journey. But one cannot, like Orpheus, go all the
way, and after a long journey one comes back. If one is lucky,
one is reborn.
—ANNE MORROW
LINDBERGHWhen companions of the way are suddenly gone from the
scene, the urge is to follow.
So we set out. If where they have gone is into death, why,
we will try to follow them there. Not, in most cases, by sui-
cide, but in the imagination—follow them “across the river,”
“through the gates of Heaven,” into the luminous world of
the spirit.
After a while we realize the search is futile. We are lost in
a wood, calling for them and they are not there.
It is a turnaround of enormous significance to abandon
that search, to return to this world. To speak of this as rebirth
is no exaggeration. We have left a demiworld that leads
nowhere and have, as changed people, resumed our com-
mitment to life.
My resolve to live “one day at a time” also means “one world at
a time.” But where my loved one is, a fragment of my spirit lives,
and waits.