“Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.”
~ The Wise by Countee Cullen
There’s something to be said for everything falling apart, for not being able to hold something together no matter how much we try. We see it as failure, sadness, and loss. And if we can hang in there through the falling down, we find that on the other side of every kind of death—a dream, a relationship, a drastic change, and even the big death with a capital “D”—is a newness. Perhaps uncomfortable and maybe unwanted, but certainly a birth, a new way of being. Losing something we love, anything we love, is difficult and often painful. As someone who has lived through many deaths of every variety, I promise you there is life on the other side. Much to my surprise, that new life has always been better than the one that came before. Even the sad ones, even the ones I prayed would never happen. I grew from each one of those changes. I learned. I became a better person. More grateful, more aware. And that’s really the point of it all, isn’t it?
Christa Avampato 