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What follows is a letter sent to us by a man who has lost his wife of over 15 years to cancer. He wrote this a few days after her death, trying to deal with what he was feeling following her passing.
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"I guess it's not such a big deal.
People die every day, every minute. I heard once that someone dies every 4 seconds. That sounds quite horrible. Think about it, every 4 seconds there is someone mourning someone else, every 4 seconds, someone is in terrible pain. On the other side of this coin, I hear that every second, someone is born, and although it is hard to comprehend the enormous numbers, it is a pretty comforting thought.
Hold your breath for 10 seconds. In that time, 10 new people have been created, life has been breathed into them, and they will join us to walk this earth. So when considering all these statistics of beginnings and endings, what is one more death? Only a forgotten part of a forgotten number, one among millions upon billions. Meaningless.
Then why does it hurt so much?
Or, you can look at it like this: We live in a huge universe, filled with billions of galaxies so far away from each other that even in a million years we wouldn't be able to travel to the nearest one or completely explore our own.
And each galaxy contains trillions of solar systems, and an almost infinite number of planets. And so these colossal things move through space for ages on end. Our lives, our whole history, are like a wink to them. Candles that are quickly snuffed out. What is one death? We are so small when compared to this vast, cold and uncaring universe.
Then why does it hurt so much?
We're all going to die eventually. I know it's not a comforting thought to most, but it's true. It need not be a bad thing, it may even be nice to consider we are all expecting the same end, regardless of money, status, or personal success. We don't know what lies beyond, but I know most of us hope and believe in an afterlife, where we can be reunited with the people we love and miss most of all. Death is a natural part of life, it defines life, and as such, it is a part of all our stories.
Then why does it hurt so much?
And here I am, my dear Anna, sitting here at a completely regular and unimpressive funeral, one of millions taking place all over the world, a small part of a huge statistic, in an enormous, cold and uncaring universe, saying goodbye to someone who may be waiting to see me again just a few years from now. This has all happened before, and will happen again. Then why does it hurt so much?" |
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Images courtesy of: winnond, tungphoto, Idea go / freedigitalphotos.net
by: Shai K.
