A friend (who has already lost her parents) told me last night that she thinks we’re at the age when it is more and more common to start losing people. I struggle mightily with this reality. My mom’s oldest friend lost her husband on Sunday and my parents are with her today. This friend of ours loves poetry and she and I have exchanged poets and poems over the years. In thinking of her and feeling my own heart break for her and her son and her grandchildren, I found this poem.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

~ e. e. cummings ~