Love and Mourning

I went to church on this sad day in a small hospital chapel. The chapel was plain and spare, a dim echo of the magnificent Catholic churches of even the recent past. The congregation was sparse and scattered about the pews, everyone alone. There were ancient nuns, one or two strangers--patient relatives, I suppose--and three physicians. Each of those physicians had lost a child under shocking and horrible circumstances. It was an insubstantial time in an insubstantial place. The service was short and then the chapel was empty.

I am old enough that I can look back on my life with some clarity and precision. I have started to write a little to raise points about things I have learned and I think of value. But there is one overriding single truth that surpasses all others: There is nothing as important as the love you have for your family and friends and the responsibility that love creates in you. And it is crucial that the love be returned.

This love is not simple; I believe it to be the building block of much of our species' accomplishments and monsters. It becomes Romeo and Othello, the bond of the warrior band, the community of the Pequod, the ideal of revolutionaries, the xenophobia of the Hatfields. Like the staircase, it goes two ways but is one. It has provided us much of our spark. Noble and trashy, austere and effusive, searching and content, kind and vengeful--it is us.