FEBRUARY 11
The problem with death is absence.
—ROGER ROSENBLATTAfter all our attempts to comfort ourselves and to make
sense out of dying, we are left with a huge hole in the fabric
of our lives—“I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.”
And then what?
The absence begins to feel familiar, the edges of the
psychic hole grow less sharp, maybe begin to grow together,
so we can walk along without being in perpetual danger of
falling into the astonishing abyss of the person’s death.
In time, the absence even mutates into another kind of
presence. Someone has said that a child who dies is with
you in a way a living child cannot be. In some ways that’s
true. And, yes, it is a comfort. This is the case not only with
children, but with parents and other loved ones who have
died and who become part of the community we carry with
us wherever we are.
Perhaps they become our guardian angels, our link with
the other side. But to let them go initially is one of the com-
promises we are forced to make with life, and our longing
for them sometimes makes the prospect of our own death
almost all right.
I am, and always will be, a part of all that I have known.