Please, forever bring Spring to my heart

How do you get over the death of a friend? How do you get on with life, when she can’t? How do you write above a eulogy post without feeling disrespectful? The answer to the first question is: you don’t, you just never do. You need to learn to live with it. Period. The answer to the second and third questions is: you do, you just do. And again you need to learn to live with it. In my case it’ helpful that my friend learned to live with herself: it would seem obvious, but it isn’t. Many, possibly most of us, go on with life, as it’s supposed to be. Supposed by whom? Oh, by parents, teachers, society, rules, supposed unshakable truths, principles of virtue, measures of success. My good friend Claudia didn’t do that: she learned the hard way to get to know herself, she explored her own nature, she stumbled, made mistakes, finally got it right, but most of all, she enjoyed each step of the way. She had no regrets, she treasured each person she met in the diverse applications of her faceted personality, she kept close to each of us, each in the particular way that was true and appropriate to the combination of our own natures. No doubt she struggled in recognising the negative people she came across, but in the end those were but a tiny minority, and her pure and positive self overcame them, as one does with a dark hole in the ground: peeked into it and recognised that that darkness didn’t belong to her, reinforced her in her luminous essence, and moved on. We would have liked to follow her journey for a much longer time… In fact, we assumed she would always be there, always here for us, wherever she’d be. And we must choose to keep thinking that way. For my part, I still feel her close to me: when I cry for her, she is there, calling my name, with a smile in her voice, as if to affirm that she understands my tears, but doesn’t need them. Although we’d much rather have her near in a much more prosaic way, we must learn to deal with the loss of her by tearing down our own prosaic limits. We feel she supports us in our struggles and waits for us on the other side of each lesson we learn, we finally face. And if that will never bring her back to us, at the same time it allows us not to lose her all together. If all of this seems plain common sense, I believe that common sense is what escapes us most in the crazy world we live in, and what gives it meaning is the actual practicing of it day by day. We promise to try, through the unavoidable tears and fears, and we are that bit much stronger thanks to the support of her ever-present example and energy. Soon we will be able to look at the beautiful nature she loved, without regretting that she won’t see it, that she isn’t next to us to enjoy it. For she does and she is. That’s the only way we can cope. That’s the only way we can truly cherish her life and her joy. No, we will never stop missing her, and yes, we will keep on living, for that is the law of Nature, of hers and ours. And she knew that, she accepted that, she honoured that, and, ultimately, she loved that.