Life and Loss...

The beauty of Nature often seems to be a shield or support against the natural events of life, with the integral facets of the living process...

Loss appears to be composed of a multitude of layers of old reality becoming a new realisation of a life without, yet each time one of these layers falls away, another becomes apparent, so that the ultimate acknowledgement of this revised existence is turned into a long process of tumbling downward but somehow never reaching the ground... acceptance.

How is it possible that a life is left or lost, and that what was so vital, living and whole is simply not there anymore? How do living beings suddenly no longer occupy part of our active lives? The questions are so basic and the answers so obvious and yet I cannot help but wonder over them again, again and again...

And then equally heart-wrenching and existentially baffling to me, is the idea of all identity being gradually eroded - or at very best compromised - at the end of a lifetime, stolen away by memory loss. How much are we made of our memories, of others and of our very selves? When do we cease to have a full identity if we can no longer remember who is who, or who or what we are or were?

This is not my own journey, but I have to watch on as this cruel process strips my father's memory away, so that now I can't even remember life with him before this illness. But there are precious moments to be lived and ones to be remembered - they just break your heart with sadness and gladness...