The death of a loved one is a painful aching in the chest, sobbed out in fragments. And just when you are sure that you’ve finished grieving once and for all, you turn an unexpected corner and run into another chunk of longing.

Facing our own death is very different from witnessing anyone else’s. Without knowing when or how we’ll die, we only know for sure that we will. The uncertainty is painful. Even more painful is thinking about giving up everyone and everything we love.

When if comes to dying, we are hopelessly out of control. The only reasonable thing we can do is turn toward enjoying life as it has been given to us, bu being as much ourselves as we are able, and by giving ourselves over to the pleasure of being with people we love and doing things that have meaning to us. We have to take what we can get and make of it what we can.

Like life, death makes fools of us all.