The Loss of Something Infinite

This is about grief. On some level, most writing is.

In music, your fingers remember what you teach them. If you show them the wrong thing, the wrong way to play a chord, let’s say, and it sinks down into your muscle memory, you’re liable to carry that flaw with you for life. The only way to save yourself, and this is really hard, is to practice it correctly more times than you’ve played it wrong. Bear in mind that when learning an instrument, you might play something wrong thousands of times. But, in theory, and with discipline, you have enough time to put things right.

When you lose a person, it’s different.

One second they’re in the boat next to you. Then, with no time to pause or process, suddenly you see them standing on the shore. You look back in the boat to make sure you’re really seeing what you’re seeing. Then back at the shore. And there they are. Standing still. A hand raised, almost apologetically, to wave, already receding behind you. And you, your boat still on the running river, moving further and further from them. The present pressing its urgent “here” and “me”. Soon, your attention is ahead again, wrestling in the current.

When someone dies, you’ve lost them forever. They are infinitely gone. Yet, you will not have infinite opportunity to deal with that fact. Time, the great nurse of all things, they say. But time is just distance.

What good is more distance from a place you’d wish to return to?