Grief

I was passing our hospital's ER when I saw...

A man holding tightly to a loved one, crying his heart out. Sobbing, weeping. Clutching for some hope; some warmth; some life, to compensate the one that had been lost.

Everyone was walking past, carefree of his sorrows or rather too caring for their own. The cars drove. The passers-by walked.

And he stood there, clutching and weeping.
Over death.

And though I felt a strong urge to hug or console him in some way, I too like everyone else, walked on.
Too carefree of his sorrow? Or too caring of my own?

                                                                           *****
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery.  He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does.  In place of this we have death.  ~Charles Sanders Peirce