Notes on Death

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"Death is inevitable."

We hear it so often, it plays like a broken record—repetitive, hollow, offering no comfort, no relief, no joy. We're told to accept its certainty, to make peace with it. But acceptance is never easy, especially when death isn't just a concept, but a cruel intrusion that steals the ones we love.

I've watched death reach out with cold, unyielding fingers and take those dearest to me. And in those moments, that well-worn phrase—"death is inevitable"—feels meaningless. There's no solace in inevitability. The ones who have gone may be at peace, I hope. But for those of us left behind, what remains is the ache of absence and the fragments of memory we hold onto like lifelines.

In the silence that follows loss, words often fall short. And yet, across centuries, poets and philosophers have tried to give language to the space between life and death, absence and presence. Two voices that have echoed through time—Henry Scott-Holland and St. Augustine—offer reflections not on death as an end, but as a continuation and transformation. Their words do not erase grief, but they cradle it gently.

"Death Is Nothing At All"- Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way

which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word

that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effect.

Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same that it ever was.

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind

because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.

For an interval.

Somewhere. Very near.

Just around the corner.

All is well.

"If You Love Me, Do Not Cry"- St. Augustine

If you love me don’t cry!

If you knew the immense mystery of the sky where I now live,

if you could see and hear what I see and hear

in these endless horizons,

and in this light that invests and penetrates everything,

you wouldn’t cry if you love me.

Here we are now absorbed by the enchantment of God,

by her expressions of infinite goodness, and by the reflections of his boundless beauty.

The things of the past are so small and fleeting

in comparison. I still have my affection for you:

a tenderness that I have never known.

I am happy to have met you over time,

even if everything was then so fleeting and limited.

Now the love that holds me deeply to you,

is pure joy without sunset.

While I live in the serene and exhilarating expectation of your arrival among us,

you think of me so!

In your battles,

in your moments of despair and loneliness,

think of this wonderful house,

where there is no death, where we will quench our thirst together,

in the most intense transport to the inexhaustible source of love and happiness.

Don’t cry anymore, if you really love me!

There is no perfect way to make peace with death. But in the act of remembering, of speaking their names, of feeling their presence in the wind or the stillness of night, we create our own fragile sense of peace. And maybe, just maybe, that's enough for now.