Life is better when we aren't alone; when we don't cut ourselves off from the rest of the world.
We make connections. We open ourselves to friendship and to love.
Love may be infinite, but life, unfortunately, is not. We lose those we love on the long, twisting journey through our lives.
Hold fast to those you love, knowing it's the greatest joy and our greatest pain; whether in this world or the ones beyond.
**This bit of prose was written a couple of years ago. It popped up in my "Memories" lately and it seemed worth sharing again. We're always Better Together.**
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She lay in the dark, grappling with a sense of loss and a growing feeling of despair.
"Do you think?" she asked. "That this is all there is? That we go through life pretending that the darkness of oblivion isn't quietly waiting for us? That we don't stand on paper thin ground, hungry to open up and swallow us into the morass of nothing?"
He thought for a moment before answering. Reluctantly, he admitted that he was afraid that nothing was all that followed life.
She clung to him, trying to remember that life wasn't just grief, wasn't just loss. That life could be the warm comfort of a body next to her in the dark. Life could be the hot sun on her skin. Life could be pleasure. Maybe not now, but someday.
"If there is an afterlife," he whispered into her ear. "We can find each other."
"The afterlife might be a slow gin fizz on a veranda rocking alongside a story spinning Mark Twain."
"It could be a long, hot night in Alexandria swaying with Cleopatra as she cradles a snake around her as tightly as fresh reptilian skin."
"Or," she reminded him. "It might be nothing. Nothing but forgetfulness and loneliness and endless loss."
"Or, just maybe," he insisted, "it could be endless nights like this one, where you aren't alone, where you don't have to be afraid of what's in the dark. All that you need is right here, right now."
They subsided into silence. She knew she loved him, and wished she could take that with her into forever, but accepted that right now is all that they might have, and that right now, it's all she really needed and perhaps the best that she can ever hope for.
