Those aren’t my words. They’re the graceful way I heard a man explain to his child (I assume) why they would not be seeing someone again, sitting in my favorite cafe in the neighborhood where I currently live. It wasn’t clear to me if this was just someone had moved far away or died, but I know which part of my brain the sentence settled into.
I’ve been trying to come to terms with impermanence. I don’t have a lot of sentimentality over most physical things, but I’ve had to face head on that what I thought was a minimalist approach to life stopped short of applying to the people in it. The signs were there—as a teenager, I had a pet Betta fish I named Percy. He was sick when I got him from the store, but I fell in love with him and did my best to cure him. He died about two weeks after I had gotten him, after we had established a playful feeding routine and he seemed to be getting healthier. I was wrecked in a way that surprised me, and it is one of the reasons I’ve remained reticent to get another pet.
So why would I think for even a second that I wouldn’t react strongly to the loss of someone?
“Sometimes the people we love don’t get to stay” is like a reminder that nothing is guaranteed to remain. But it does away with the annoying things in other platitudes—whether that’s foisting responsibility onto a grand plan or vaguely assigning causality onto something senseless.
I’ve been learning about Buddhism, too, because I will next move to a country with a rich Buddhist history. Impermanence is a cornerstone of Buddhist teachings. We are all transient, constantly changing and decaying. Not only is life short or existence fleeting, but I will never again be exactly as I am right now as I write this post.
Sometimes I find this very comforting. Other times it leaves me feeling more broken than before.
Unmoored Sister 