Everybody dies and leaves the world behind to grieve
Life is worth living until it isn’t
And joy which enters from time to time
Lacks the definiteness and certainty of death
And so we swaddle death in mythology
Buffering what we know with what we can imagine
Now you’re speaking in generalities said Carmine Sabatini
Knowing that many facts of law custom and nature
Apply universally
Everybody dies along with every other thing
That has ever lived

What is life people used to ask
But not what is death
Homely familiar
But people place too much stock in is
As if the world were composed of objects
Without event process or situation
Life no doubt is process
And death merely a state of things
And for whom
For the living
The grieving

And people place far too much stock
In their little identities
From which they can’t bear to depart
Self-preservation instinct in the merest bacterium
We can probably outgrow or at least control
That primitive configuration of will
But reason exclusive domain of persons
Requires that we love one another
And therefore requires that we grieve
And experience the fullness of the loss
Of any in our universal family