Death is inevitable, and it isn’t so sad,
except that we cared.
Raised children, loved others,
and loved our lives.
I don’t think of my death, it doesn’t matter much
because I won’t be here.
But when I think of the richness of others,
it hurts.
All the years of caring, building, and loving,
swept away by the inevitability of mortality.
But I am just feeling what their loss means to me.
They won’t be here anymore.
Why should we care and persist
in a place of such implacable swinging doors?
But, we have no choice, mortal or not.
We love and feel and care, and we spend the time we have.
How then, to encourage the child who loves
and knows nothing of all of this?
How then, to love the people you love,
even as you feel time moving behind every moment?
Blessed and doomed, trusting and dead,
we are momentary bursts of awareness,
bits of lightning in an implacable darkness.
Is it any wonder that I both love and cry?
gallagher
14Dec23
Christchurch