An answer year

 

We started off as a question year: Surely there had to be an end to this much pain? Surely there was something more to be done? And then we switched to a different sort of questions: Did he know, when he said no ventilators and we laughed, even the oncologist, because surely there was no question of a ventilator when all he had was a pain in his shoulders? What was it he wanted to say when he asked my brother to sit by his side? Did he hold on a few hours longer just so our anniversary would remain untouched by death? Yes life ends, but why so much pain for a person so gentle? The questions rolled in one after the next, questions about what now and what next and how to re-imagine our lives and roots in the wake of the wave that carried us this far. 

Earlier this year, I wrote that grief was love untethered. Not an original idea, probably, as I've seen many quotes since then that voice that idea. The question that remained, though, is where does the grief/ love go, and why does it flood the spaces in everything, and where does this end?

Last week or so, I came across a quote about an enduring idea of death, this from The Good Place: 

And then, of course, there was a poem, this one by W.S. Merwin: 

When love is untethered, it turns out, it goes everywhere. It is impossible to look at the world and not see the memory of the wave in the water all around. It sparkles sometimes bright enough to make you tear up, and sometimes the memory of the wave wells up so strong you could drown. This is where the love goes.