“You’ve got to love life to have life, and you’ve got to have life to love life.”
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town
People, places, family members integral to life come and go. Even as we know the moments we spend with them are fleeting. Even though experience teaches us we won’t have the extraordinary privilege of having them forever we proceed with the ordinariness of living.
“Does anybody realize what life is
while they’re living it- every, every minute?”
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3119231-our-town-a-play-in-three-acts
Lately these quotes have been invading my days. A year ago we lost two of our dogs and today seems a sort of midpoint between the expected and the unexpected losses.
When someone is sick or aging we grieve their loss. When we lose someone we fully expected to be present the next day, grief appears and can be experienced differently.
Rehashing the last moments. What we might have done differently. In life we rehearse weddings, graduations, milestone events. We practice breathing techniques for birth. There is no rehearsal for death, particularly when unexpected, unanticipated, unwanted.
There is no way to go back and try again. Peace and comfort arrive in their own time. As much as I want them to stay, they are only visitors.
SpiritnSoul 