“It’s all one,” said Keats. “We keep on breathing.” Or we don’t. Keats didn’t, at 26.
My nephew didn’t, at 71 days.
Someday I won’t anymore, you won’t. It’s not just the knowledge of the surety of death that this has brought home to me, but how asinine are most of my pursuits. I want to hold on to that crystal clarity I found in the days following his death, the purity of love I felt then, in honor of him.
My intention to live only with hope from that moment on.
But it infects everything I do and write now, how God allows bad things to happen to good people, how the problem of evil is the only problem that matters, how death is a living breathing presence behind each of our backs. And that makes all my inanity seem less important, all the ephemeral photographs of a New England summer.
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted.”
All that’s left is an empty shape, an outline, a blank space, and if we heal then that ragged hole will be gone too and we’ll have nothing left of him. But words are the only weapon I have with which to fight the darkness.
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| Art Spiegelman, Maus |
