Losing a friend

https://terracemuse.tumblr.com/post/136916671019/this-dewdrop-world-is-a-dewdrop-world-and/amp

Losing close friends is a universal experience. As children, I usually lost friends because I moved to a new school (sometimes a new province or country). But as an adult, one loses a close friend as well either by death (two of my closest friends, about 20 years ago now, on the same day coincidentally), or by estrangement (three of my closest friends over the intervening years for very different reasons). I also lost a number of friends when I moved from Montreal nearly 10 years ago of course.

I don't know about you. I always find it hard to lose someone close to me. In my meditation group on Sundays we often talk about impermanence. But knowing even more and more deeply about impermanence does not make loss easier.

I think of Issa who suffered much more severe loss, and wrote his famous haiku about a dew-drop world. He understood, probably far better than I, how basic impermanence is to the fabric of existence. He understood both philosophically and through immense personal loss of his children and spouse. But he still ends the haiku with the words "and yet... and yet".

And yet. When you love someone, when you deeply care about their well-being, when you value not only who they are but enjoy a daily friendship, and then for whatever reason they are gone, and sometimes worse happens and they completely turn their face away or even die...

Impermanence is at these moments a great struggle.

And yet!