Life and death are two forces beyond anyone’s control—save for the Gods of Life and the Gods of Death. Absolute forces walking hand in hand. For something to live, something else must die. Where the dead once stood, the living shall rise.

Sometimes this happens physically, sometimes—metaphorically.
Every loss, every encounter with the terrifying and difficult moments in life, reminds us of death.
We leave behind a familiar home, moving to another—and no matter how great the joy of this desired change, we still grieve, bidding farewell to our past, leaving it behind in the house we depart from.
We lose people—not always to literal death, but sometimes they die for us, for our lives, for our feelings. And even if we know this might bring us the joy of new connections or relief (if the relationship weighed us down), we still mourn the loss.
And that’s not even mentioning the losses tied to physical death—when we lose those close to us, family, even those not so close, and the strings of death resonate beside us.

Our life is inseparable from death. Death is the end of something old, making space for something new.

But death is always painful. Heavy. Difficult. Sad. It is tears. It is desperate screams and equally desperate silence. It is the need to speak, to speak endlessly of your pain. And the need—to stay quiet, to hold the pain inside, to share it with no one.

No matter the loss—physical or internal, expected or sudden, leading to change or something else entirely—death and loss share one truth: fighting it is futile. It must be lived through.
In loss and death, there is no room for avoidance—the longer we run from facing it, the harder and swifter it will catch up and knock us down. Everything has its time: death, the process of enduring it, and the adaptation to what comes after.

Because after—there will be an after.
On the scale of the World—the Soul’s rest and rebirth into a new life.
On the scale of a single life, having lost something on earth and faced death—there will be life again.

In both cases: it will never be the same as before. We will grieve what must be grieved (and who knows how much or how long is “must”? No one—not even the one who grieves, and even they may not know until later, when they finally understand and feel it), and then we will open ourselves to new life.

But before we open to the new—we will weep. Shatter dishes. Scream. Claw at our skin, tear our hair. Our tears will be mixed with blood. Our voices—raw with desperation. Our silence will hum like a taut string. We will ask questions, but we will not need answers.
We will be in a state of loss.

And now I will say something heretical in today’s world, with its relentless pace and obsession with achievement, with its philosophy of constant productivity.
The state of loss is a normal state. It is necessary for us—with all its pain and weight!—so that one day, one day, someday later, we may breathe freely again.

But for now, while that lump of loss sits heavy in your chest—do not try to force it out or shove it deeper inside.
Live with it. Feel it. Let the loss inside you live its life—yes, even loss, death, and sorrow have their own life!

And one day, that lump will turn into a flower.
You will exhale it—and it will bloom into the petals of a new life.

Everything in its own time.

© Elena Shuwany