I have thought a lot about death recently - what it means to lose someone close. To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who inhabit the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing - I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.
No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it's own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. What to say and how to say it to provoke a reaction. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that’s why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot - being only human - put asunder what the universe has joined together.
