“And then, in accepting it, it did not become a defeat or a loss, but a moment in which suddenly, teary-eyed, I realized I had spent my days, or a good chunk of them anyway, squeezing amazement at my time with her out of every moment. Now there was nothing to do but look on her corners and cobwebs, every flaking piece of paint, every hinge and crease in the floor as a dear old friend, one whose time with me, or mine with her, had come to an end.

Letting go was like sitting at the bedside of a dying friend – one who had loved me well, whose paper-thin hand rested gently in my own as her last breath left her. I watched her go, I could not move, I could not weep, I could not stop weeping. Sad I could not do more, knowing I had done all anybody could, the end was a shock, but the life had been so thick and full that in that final silence there was nothing but the beating heart of my own surrender and acceptance, and I did not feel bereft, though the loss was devastating.

Before enough time could pass, I turned to see not the chasm of devastation and grief I had expected to encounter, and perhaps deserved, or had grown accustomed to, but instead – life! An opening, an unexpected glimmer which broadened into the impossibility of a robust future, for she was not dead at all, but resurrected, fully formed, and wiser for her passage through our inevitable future, and just as shocked as I at having traveled through that event horizon and returned, wholly, to me.

I did not take her for granted in our first go-round, and, seeing her pink-cheeked, flushed and full, I will love her well in her next incarnation as well, amazed as I am to still feel the power of her embrace when I was so sure she had gone’.

— Kate Howe