The tides of life take another sandcastle

More sad news this weekend. One I love is on hospice. I will likely be attending her funeral before the end of the year. It is agony, knowing this, knowing this on the one year anniversary of my failed attempt to commit her to medical care involuntarily. She's lived longer that I expected, though I don't think few would consider her existence anything resembling 'living'. Ah well.

The nice thing is that I had someone at hand to hold me after I'd gotten the news about her condition. He lay with me on my bed and held me, and kissed my forehead and my eyelids, and soothed me with his hands and his mouth and his words. Genuine intimacy in combination with vulnerability has been a balm for the pain of loss. It has opened doors within us both.

Elie Wiesel said, "When a door closes, another opens. It is the same door." Life, pain, death, loss... None of it has any meaning except what I give it. What will I make her death mean about her life, my life, the world, the legal system, the medical establishment? What will I make the love I feel for him mean, I wonder. Even as something ends, there is a beginning. It is cyclical, ebbing and flowing like that tide, and the lives we're building are castles of sand. It means nothing, in and of itself--it means only what I make it mean. Soon the tides of life and death will claim another sandcastle, and in that clearing, something new will arise. Let it be Hope, I beg. Let it be Hope.