December 1, 2007 – When Izzy loses someone in hospice that he’s been visiting, we always go back for a final visit to the family, or a last visit to the bed or chair where he last saw them. Izzy seems to know when people are gone, at least he doesn’t bother to look for them.
  And he always hops up on the bed or lies where his friends were, and closes his eyes for a bit. I don’t quite understand it, I have to say, but it’s not something I can either forget or explain.
   I think, as C.S. Lewis does, that there is some vanity when it comes to dealing with loss or grief. We want to prove to ourselves that we are players, lovers on a grand scale, tragic heroes; not just ordinary people, part of the throng, or privates in the huge army of the bereaved, plodding along, making the best of things.
  We don’t want loss or grief to be prolonged, but we want something else of which grief is just a symptom, and then we confuse the symptom with the thing itself. There is joy in loss, and release, part of the awful beauty and mystery of life. It tests us, challenges us, forces us to be better or worse, defines who we are. I suppose loss gives meaning to gain, an empty hole followed by the thing that fills it.