What is a person?
A mystery shrouded in flesh,
Here for a very short time.
What is life?
An exchange of impressions;
Impacts struck between persons.
What is death?
A vast emptiness; a hole torn out of the world.
What are we, for each other?
A mirror, a measure, an echo, a sounding board, a symphony.
What do we become when our notes are removed, one by one?
We are diminished. What if our orchestra loses its timpani, then its trombone, its woodwinds, violas…
We grow silent. Mute.
And nauseous.
Why nauseous?
Death is a bad meal. A terribly rancid feast.
We become like one concussed, knocked silly, delirious and dizzy, and very unsettled. It is difficult to keep our food down. We have no appetite. Only desire for the one who died; for the life, the person; and for ourselves, who we had been before, to return.
We yearn to repair the hole left in our universe. Because we are like planets now without a sun; spinning out of orbit and crashing violently towards an inner darkness.
How can it be? We were, and we are no more.
United, together, no longer.
The leaves flutter in the breeze; perhaps they soothe our sorrows, as though the souls of the departed are carried upon the wind, or by the birds flying overhead. Are they? Where are they?
Where exactly is heaven? Were we to jump into the hole they’ve left behind, could we find it? Could we follow them?
Will we be reassembled, our orchestra, in that other place? Will we perform our symphony yet again in another world?
God willing, may we all meet again; under better circumstances.
~FS
Prayerful Life 