For some, birth and death entwine, for some no three score and ten.
I was drawn towards a well tended grave at the edge of the cemetery. A son born and died on the same day. His parents had left cards on what would have been his 38th birthday a couple of weeks before I crouched at the foot of his grave.
Walking away, vaguely uncomfortable having read his parents loving words I felt bowed with sadness. Gazing around the cemetery the weight in my chest immediately transformed into a thought: loss is life. My shoulders unfurled recognising the love and longing made physical in stone, wreath and engraved text surrounding me.
The pain of loss is witnessed in a graveyard. Loss lives here. It is important that losses live. They walk with us anyhow, matching our stride in patient silence.
The years are counted in a loved ones absence. I imagine these parents recognised their son in boys, and now men the age he would be. A particular shade of hair, a gait, the angle of a cheek - gut knowing, a catch in the heart. Would our boy have been like that? Is this him? A weary searching for... something...
Loss has a life, it grows with us. It's facets revealed as we age and carry the weight of further losses. Recognising something of an-other when it's too late to say, 'oh, I get it now, I understand.'
Grieving and living while the sun shines on our faces and the birds sing and it's beautiful and our hearts break all the same.
