“‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”
— Yehuda Halevi
I heard the first line from the poem above a couple of weeks ago and I was so touched by it. Love is scary… and to love what death can touch is the hardest thing for us humans to do. And yet, it is in the very fabric of our existence that death touches what contains life.
I’ve thought a lot about how courageous it is to love what we can, and will inevitably lose. But loss is a necessary part of the human experience. And while we may think it is escapable by avoiding relationships, I would argue that is an illusion.
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